Constellations

chris connolly - black beach

When we first heard this piece, it was at an earlier stage in its development, at a gathering with a group of Toronto audio aficionados. We both were moved by rawness of the tape. This sort of vulnerable conversation about masculinity was something we'd rarely, if ever, heard before. We love the piece's intimacy, not only in the words spoken but also in its style - the stereo recording, the feeling of being able to drift alongside its narrators as they walk the shoreline. Black Beach is Chris' first foray into audio, and we're so glad to be able to share it here on Constellations.

kaija siirala - a conversation

Kaija's immersive piece is chock-full of sensual field recordings, including to our delight "some recordings of me playing piano downstairs in my old house through a hydrophone in the bathtub". Listening to this piece feels like we're following the fisherman's current into a suspension between light and shadow, propelled by bold transitions and a sensitivity to the musicality of voice. 

joaquin cofreces - maquinas humanas

Even if you don't understand Spanish, this piece is an evocative, multi-lingual sci-fi adventure. Masterfully produced, its assemblage of voices, samples, sound design, complex musical beds and sound effects wind it up into a delicious ear candy collage that leaves listeners reeling and dreaming.  We haven't heard any sound-art fiction like this before. 

meira asher - refuse: military.01

This complex manifesto of a piece is powerful both in its content and delivery. Noam's written testimony is powerful, but set against the rhythmic collage of percussion, sampling, and field recordings, its descriptions are rendered more raw and graphic. Meira's work is politically relevant as ever, and we're inspired by the bold and heartfelt stand she makes in all her work.

rui costa + maile colbert - birds of maio

That this piece was born from a beautiful love story is evident in the intricate and intimate texture of the sounds. The pulsating soundscape traverses mood and plays with space in its reverberations. Who knew that symphonic wildness of bird sounds set against a gentle music box would be such a striking juxtaposition. 

tk matunda - snooze

We love the closeness, vulnerability, and musicality of this piece. TK has taken morning drowsiness, that floating time between conscious and unconscious, and massaged it into a tender swirl of thoughts, hums, and dreams. 

phoebe wang - in search of the miraculous (bas jan ader)

This piece feels like rifling through a scrapbook inside someone's head. Its structure is as flowing and choppy as the ocean that Phoebe so often alludes to. We love Phoebe's play with music, and the raw meticulousness of the tape she's collected. This is a piece that resists traditional personal narrative storytelling arcs; it reveals itself slowly through additional listens. 

bonnie jones - and if i live a thousand lives i hope to remember one

This piece does a magic thing of infusing a recording with the nowness of live music; it is as much a happening as the musical performances that were its building blocks, with the failure of the recording technology as performer and conductor. In a percussive wave of otherworldly sighs and stutters, the richly textured sound leaves us guessing, with memorable sonic moments passing before can fully process them, so that when they stay longer than expected we are moved and curious - but the tape rolls on.

anna friz - air can break your heart

This piece sits somewhere between music and installation. As a 'narrator', Anna's 'air' is endowed with aliveness, and palpably shifts in mood and voice throughout the piece, at times sounding almost human.  Clinging to its gliding tail, listeners catch glimpses of urban spaces. Sometimes evoking chamber music, and other times, wind, static, and other manipulated field recordings, in this piece Anna tenderly blurs the line between music and noise. 

jeff emtman - dream tapes

We're excited by the tactile nature of this project -imagining the recorders Jeff sent out waiting on 50 strangers' bedside tables, and their sleep-drunk fumbles with the record button. As an ensemble, the dream tapes are a peek into an alternate subconscious reality. The speakers are recording as they cross the boundary between sleep and waking. Their words slip past the mind's sense censor and thus possess a kind of intimacy that is interesting beyond the psychedelic content of the dreams.