Patterns in Nature - Chaos Theory - Stephen Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" - Biomimetics - Cybernetics- Post-Humanism - Information Theory- Digital Architecture - Fluxus - Post Modernism - Minimalism- NASA- Cymatics -HAARP - JG Ballard - Non-Linear Dynamics - Psychoacoustics - Sonics - Science Fiction - Physics -Quantum Mechanics - Language - Love/Sex - Virology - Generative Systems - Philosophy - Psychology - Colour Spectrum Theory - Visual Mathematics - Morphic Resonance - Richard Dawkins/Selfish Gene/Blind Watchmaker - Buckminster Fuller/Geodesics/Spaceship Earth/Tensegrity - Rupert Sheldrake/Morphic Resonance.. Crop Circles as the highest form of public art and sacred geometry... to be continued....
Sounds Like
LEVEL OPALE, Spekk, Japan, December 2008
SILENT BALLET - Top 50 Albums of the year, 2008
SYNESTHETECH - Top 25 Albums of the year, 2008
Opale is a broken mirror, with its shards lying on the ground, reflecting the stars. Each individual piece, or track, is reflecting a similar scene, a similar glance at what is apparently timeless, but actually set within the same temporal bonds that bind us all. It is simultaneously hopeful and dark, star-gazing yet consciously earth-bound, and these seemingly conflicting properties unified by what they are – a whole album, made up of distinct pieces of an entire work. Its brokenness is what unifies it, and what allows the listener to see so many aspects of a moment that could so easily pass by, unnoticed. The album is an ambient experience to be savored, just as those frozen moments that only stand out in hindsight – don’t let either of them pass by. (Zach Mills) www.thesilentballet.com
Barry G Nichols traces his involvement in leftfield music back to a meeting with Ben Ponton and Robin Storey of :zoviet*france: in 1983;he’s spent the next 26 years combining and eliding the roles of writer, designer, promoter, theoretician and sound installation artist, under a string of guises. Although he has always fought shy of being described as a musician, OPALE is certainly the most musical of all his projects to date. It’s also the most nakedly emotional – a self-confessed attempt to recreate, preserve and mark evanescent moments of heightened experience. The entire record is built from piano motifs, which were provided by Linden Hale and Keith Berry, and Nichols makes no attempt to deconstruct their mournful source material. Instead, he ushers them through his digital studio to add glittery accents and gentle caresses. The looming grandeur offered by generous use of the sustain pedal is delicately enhanced, while pensive, rippling notes are moulded into exploratory loops, their cadences drawn out into slow waterfalls of sound. The end result is elegiac and exquisite.
THE WIRE , January/February 2009
Baz Nichols resides in the UK, a country renowned for poor weather
> and damp surroundings. With Level, Nichols weaves something of an
> audio blanket for his listeners - a fizzing, glowing, pulsing mesh
> of audio that bubbles with something of an analog warmth.
> Level has been Nichols ongoing project for sometime and has been
> concerned with a wide range of sounds from minimal explorations
> into digital sound possibilities through to more textural
> landscapes. Here he is most certainly locating himself in the world
> of the soundscape - each piece on Opale is a lush and multi-layered
> affair, which occasionally bursts open with micro-sized explosions
> of rhythm. Drawing inspiration from piano sources amongst other
> things, Nichols seems in no rush to make his way through any of
> these pieces. In fact he seems truly at ease with letting each of
> the eight compositions unfold in their own time - elements gentle
> emerging and disappearing with a considered ease. Pieces like Opale
> 4 (Mobilus), in which a clanking pulse emerges mid-piece, only to
> fade away into a wash of cloudy texture produced a result rich in
> subtle gesture that's ultimately rather rewarding.
> In some ways Level's latest offering ties into a long history of
> English ambient music - the gentle piano tones of Opale 6 (Oriente)
> for example sound like some mulched variation on a theme by Eno
> from the late seventies. This edition does not dunk itself entirely
> in this era however, merely it tilts its hat toward those that have
> come before. Opale's refreshing gusts of static layers, warm
> electronics and gentle texture makes for an utterly satisfying listen.
> HHHH (Lawrence English)
>
> as published in Time Off, Australia 02/09
Review of Level "Cycla" CD, Spekk- Japan December 2006
Eno style slow downs, only in the digital domain...a sonic integrity throughout supports some very visual music, luminescent sonic fictions. From the off we are in the territory of a space odyssey via the slo mo frame sequence although this could be based on earth too: I am reminded of a John Adams classical record I bought, 'Shaker Loops' (1983): it's something about the pathos that resonates from the music: other comparisons could include Deltraxx's 'Alaska Slowwater' on the fax labels 'Ambient Compilation 3', in the early 90's. The bespoke sleeve, pretty much plastic free, contains photographic work by Maura Wallace, from the "ICE series", and there is something glacial about the music, its slow pace, its steady presence. Although this could be taken too generally, as at times you get more of a sense of velocity, in a smooth way, and this also affects the perception of space within the music. There are an interesting range of sound sources used: there sounded like there was some electric and acoustic guitar at one stage; and some brush strokes on the snare briefly too, but again within the slow motion time frames and generally reverential treatments employed here. Some very contemplative music, in a not dissimilar ground as Sakamoto and Nicolai's recent 'Insen'.
(Ben Guiver) Dogmanet
With the exception of a more "normal" final track, "Cycla" is an engrossing album, finely conceived and structured by sound artist and designer B.G.Nichols. All over the disc, streams of otherworldly resonances and distant echoes of semi-sculpted rhythms accompany the listener, playing hide-and-seek in every invisible corner to reveal themselves again, enhanced by their self-regenerative projection, in the space between the ears and the outside world - and, if possible, showing even more grace. Although pretty consonant, often with a tendency to sadness, "Cycla" maintains a perfect evenness between the obvious will to discover "what lurks behind" the sound and a long-desired passivity, continuously caressed by sonic architectures which seem to contain the teachings of Brian Eno, Steve Tibbetts and Suso Saiz, disassembled and lyophilized into a sense of undescribable gratification of the nerves. With this release, Nichols has managed to put out one of the best "accessible" soundscapes heard in recent times, music which is elegant yet profound.
(Massimo Ricci) Touching Extremes
I don't mean it lightly when I say that 'Cycla' is my favourite release on the incredible Spekk label. The almost flawless catalogue is all worth checking out in finer detail, but 'Cycla' from British artist Level aka Barry G Nichols just goes that little bit deeper, that little bit further into the psyche. Similar to many of the other Spekk releases, the record is minimal for want of a better description, and comparable to much of 12k's recent output, however Nichols has forged a distinct sound in an indistinct world, and using manipulated instrument recordings, synthesized tones and environmental sounds he forges alien landscapes and glacial atmospheres. Nichols describes the way he works as 'sculpting with sound', as he works into the music (for instance piano chords) as if it were a block of granite, chiselling at frequencies until we are left with something beautiful, human and unique. This all might be beginning to sound a little academic and dry, but honestly that is everything 'Cycla' manages to avoid at times sounding closer to Cliff Martinez's crucial 'Solaris' soundtrack or the more textured work of Deaf Center than to the difficult, stripped down experiments into silence you could be expecting. All the sounds become so dense and eroded that Nichols reaches an almost Deathprod level of Zen; you can hear that there are layers and multiple elements in the music just about, but it is all shrouded in a fog of distorted sound. It would be fruitless to go into any detail about the tracks individually as this is an album with an arc that needs to be listened to in its entirety, it doesn't have stand out tracks or dull moments rather it is a satisfying and hugely involving listening experience from the moment you hit play until the closing gasps. To put it simply you need this record, fans of William Basinski, Taylor Deupree, Pjusk, Kenneth Kirschner et al should look no further. Huge recommendation.
VISIT THE WHITE_LINE REVIEW PAGES: http://whiteline1.wordpress.com/
"Without deviation, there is no progress"
FOURM began in 2007 as an experimental offshoot of the highly successful Level project, taking a more exploratory and investigative approach to sound outside of the established frameworks and boundaries of "composition".
FOURM attempts to re-site and reconfigure sound, taking it beyond the level of passive entertainment, by creating structures and atmospheres that work in harmony with personal space, and within, and through architecture
(dubbed "ARCHISONICS" by the artist). More recently, FOURM has been working on microsonic, and particulate structures, taking examples from a fusion of natural, architectural, and pure sculptural form. Rather than being interpreted as music, these auditory formations should be approached as temporal sculpture created with sound, at once fixed and recorded, yet emerging from a fluid and transitional digital medium.
INTERVIEWS WITH FOURM & LEVEL CAN BE FOUND AT THESE LINKS:
NEW WHITE_LINE RELEASE- Variations in White, featuring commissioned soundworks by: Lawrence English, Shinkei, Miguel A Garcia, AndyGraydon, Asher, Richard Garet, Yann Novak, Heribert Friedl, and FOURM
details at the FOURM site here: http://fourm.wordpress.com
Allied souls, Luigi Turra and Barry G. Nichols (aka FOURM) are blessed with a sound delicacy reflected in the new outing on White_Line Editions "Meditation Space", for the Archisonics series.
An artistic affinity which expresses itself through the parisian project of Tadao Ando - Meditation Space - carving swirls of processed field recordings, subtle ripplings, atmospheric dust, fades and dilations.
Two interpretations of one vibrant spatial essence, sonic delicacies in light and shade effects which perfectly bind the external/internal admission route, highlighting almost visually the sculptural materiality of the architecture.
A space both hermetic and ascetic, in which nature is mirrored and then fractured, stripping itself of its obvious materiality with the sheer object to give voice to that silence so much researched by Ando, as by Turra and Fourm.
An almost monastic silence, sought after with intelligent reductionism and careful reading of the "place", to outline one more time a fascinating sonic plasticity and to remember that "... you cannot carry percussions in farthest space, you carry your mind." (A. Russell)
Dominique Petitgand, Angus Carlyle, François Martig & Philippe Petitgenêt, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, James Beckett, Jacob Kirkegaard, Frank Rothkamm Dominique Blais, Andrea Williams,Jodi Rose & Erik Minkkinen, Radio-Continental Drift Radio, Matmos
