I agree whole-heartedly about Lance Austin Olsen. There is a remarkable imagination at work here, and your film analogy rings true, but I was thinking more in terms of horror rather than noir! I loved the powerful sense of doom in ‘Meditation…’, some only-just-human noises emerging from a droning and scraping backdrop.
I do though disagree with one of your [slight] misgivings about Linda Caitlin Smith -I enjoy her ‘noodling’! What a great series, and the booklet is fascinating in terms of context – it’s clear that Canada has its own distinct non-European and non-USA voices, but with no overt school of thought or practice.
[…] “… long durations allow Olsen the patience for atmospheres to be established and consolidated, for the complexity of sounds to be unravelled, and for a fascinating sense of narrative to emerge. In A Meditation on the History of Painting (the only work you’re likely to encounter that includes an ‘amplified iron park bench’) it’s tempting to hear the piece as an attempt to avoid any kind of direct statement … as if entirely disconnected from any kind of active creative impulse. Only when this vanishes into silence does the activity become more obviously deliberate, forming a dronal environment etched by deep scratches and fragments of recorded dialogue and singing (from a wax cylinder). … Dark Heart is even more impressive; the interplays of pitch and noise, of sustained and granular sounds, and of live and prerecorded elements, are present here too and they attain something that defies categorisation, something completely magical. i don’t use that word lightly: it’s difficult if not impossible to articulate precisely how the discrete elements Olsen uses in the piece … combine and coalesce to create something that so completely transcends them all. … like the avant-garde sound design for a futuristic noir filmed in ultra-high definition monochrome, it somehow manages to be elusive and immersive at the same time, projecting a narrative that’s whatever you want it to be and which is utterly convincing.” (reviewed in October) […]
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I agree whole-heartedly about Lance Austin Olsen. There is a remarkable imagination at work here, and your film analogy rings true, but I was thinking more in terms of horror rather than noir! I loved the powerful sense of doom in ‘Meditation…’, some only-just-human noises emerging from a droning and scraping backdrop.
I do though disagree with one of your [slight] misgivings about Linda Caitlin Smith -I enjoy her ‘noodling’! What a great series, and the booklet is fascinating in terms of context – it’s clear that Canada has its own distinct non-European and non-USA voices, but with no overt school of thought or practice.
[…] “… long durations allow Olsen the patience for atmospheres to be established and consolidated, for the complexity of sounds to be unravelled, and for a fascinating sense of narrative to emerge. In A Meditation on the History of Painting (the only work you’re likely to encounter that includes an ‘amplified iron park bench’) it’s tempting to hear the piece as an attempt to avoid any kind of direct statement … as if entirely disconnected from any kind of active creative impulse. Only when this vanishes into silence does the activity become more obviously deliberate, forming a dronal environment etched by deep scratches and fragments of recorded dialogue and singing (from a wax cylinder). … Dark Heart is even more impressive; the interplays of pitch and noise, of sustained and granular sounds, and of live and prerecorded elements, are present here too and they attain something that defies categorisation, something completely magical. i don’t use that word lightly: it’s difficult if not impossible to articulate precisely how the discrete elements Olsen uses in the piece … combine and coalesce to create something that so completely transcends them all. … like the avant-garde sound design for a futuristic noir filmed in ultra-high definition monochrome, it somehow manages to be elusive and immersive at the same time, projecting a narrative that’s whatever you want it to be and which is utterly convincing.” (reviewed in October) […]