
In 1997, British musician Janek Schaefer created an instrument he named the ‘tri-phonic turntable’, a pimped-up record deck featuring a trio of tone arms and the ability to play fast and loose with rotation direction and speed. That same year, he gave a performance at the Urban Salon in London where he premièred the instrument, with a work titled Tri-phonic Revolutions. In 2003, Schaefer brought the instrument back to London, to the ICA for that year’s Cut and Splice festival. where he performed the piece again.
It’s superbly atmospheric, and seems coincidentally appropriate at this time of year, as there’s something of a cold, even wintry quality to it. Despite the fact that the piece revolves (in every sense) around a turntable, its soundworld is a mixture of loops and more nebulous sonic objects, and the characteristic sound of vinyl crackle and pop only occurs from time to time, and always in such a way that it sounds deliberate, as if Schaefer were sprinkling dust to cause it to happen on cue. There are mysterious quantities of shimmer that lurk at the periphery, faint traces of speech (Schaefer’s earliest work with the tri-phonic turntable focused on voices), glimpses of tinkling, soft piano chords. Perhaps what i love most about it is the way it takes it time, Schaefer constructing his soundworld organically and carefully, in which everything seems entirely right, as if the sounds could not exist in any other context.
There’s an unavoidable hauntological quality to the latter half of the performance, when new loops of pitched materials sound dirty, like bells caked in mud heard through fog. A strong suspended pitch moves into the foreground, its clarity decorated by scratchy noise and detritus all around. This becomes the basis for a late-stage plateau with smaller sounds materialising and receding. The conclusion is lovely: out into a reverberant loop equal parts crackle and pitch, sounding from a distance and moving ever further away, the notes sliding as if they were melting, ending with an unexpected appearance of squelch before a small, final surge.
This performance of Tri-phonic Revolutions was given by Janek Schaefer in April 2003 at the ICA in London.