o respirar da
paisagem toshiya tsunoda | sirr012
Toshiya Tsunoda makes a complete new
world available for the ears of
others and it's a fascinating world
indeed.
Phosphor
Magazine
Tsunoda
is a sound artist of a most radical
kind. Not in the sense that he
produces harsh edged music, but in his
simplicity working with sound. He
takes a couple of microphones or contact
microphones and tapes his
environment. His role as a composer
is to select the right piece from
presumably a larger set of recordings.
His recordings are detailed on the
cover. "A pair of microphones were
set in the road between two big
warehouses. You can hear the mechanical
sound of a cargo ship, echoing
regularly. There was a person practicing
trumpet in the distance" - is for
instance a description of 'Road Between
Warehouses' (as you can see: no
messing about with titles either). It
sounds like a drone captured outside,
with distant motor hum, birds, cars
and indeed a distant trumpet. Fourteen
of these beautiful pieces, all in varying
areas, both human made and
natural, are presented here. It sounds,
if I read this back, like it's all
so simple, but it's not. Tsunoda captures
the right space, the right
recording angle and knows exactely when
a piece has the right length. Not a
dull moment in sight here.
Next to Chris Watson's work, Tsunoda
belongs for me to the absolute top of
sound environmentalists. Another masterpiece!
Vital Weekly
Toshiya Tsunoda a has a sixth sense
for finding potentially interesting
locations to record. And he has a seventh
for finding the right way to edit
them and put them together to compose
an ear-grabbing CD. O Respirar da
Paisagem culls 14 field recordings between
two and nine minutes long that
Tsunoda groups into three categories.
He gives the collective title “On
a
boundary line” to recordings of
sounds standing between two spaces
(indoor/outdoor, as in &“Cicada
and Window” where the chorus of
cicadas
sips into the room through the gap between
the two window panes as they are
rattled by the wind). “Context
of the space” captures ground
vibrations and
the sonic spirit of an unsuspecting
location. “Observation and object”
groups field recordings of two of his
sound installations involving sine
waves and electro-magnetic fields. Tsunoda’s
detailed notes are invaluable
in understanding the uniqueness of each
track, but if you choose to ignore
them you will still discover the beauty
of unknown places: the sounds of
human life reverberating near and far
in “Scenery of a Fishing Port”;
a
cargo ship, a trumpet player and pigeons
interacting even though they ignore
each other’s presence in {&“Road
Between Warehouses”}; or the secret
life of
old wooden floors in {&“Floor
Boards.”} The album is not trying
to tell a
story. Instead it feels like a slide
show: the landscape is regularly pulled
away from your ears and replaced by
a new, intriguing one.
François
Couture, All Music Guide
We last heard Toshiya Tsunoda on Solid
Vibration, a joint release from
Intransitive and Fringes Recordings
(reviewed in Issue 060) released last
year. For that release he took a close
look at the vibrations of objects
which are more or less inaudible on
their own. Using a "piezo ceramic
sensor" (or contact mic), he renders
these vibrations as something audible,
in rich combinations of sonic details.
With O Respirar da Paisagem (The
Breathing of the Landscape), Tsunoda
continues his exploration of
vibrations, compiling various recordings
from 1994 through to 2000. The
recordings are divided into three themes
as they relate to vibration:
boundary lines (vibrations between spaces,
objects), space (vibrations
through air and solids) and the act
of observation itself. Using either
contact or omni-directional microphones,
Tsunoda records spaces and objects,
capturing and rendering as audible the
unique vibrations of each location,
of each moment in time. Listening, the
world seems to open up, becoming a
place of infinite depth and possibility,
at least where sound is concerned.
You lean in close and discover a unique
world in each track, echoes,
environmental sounds, the vibrations
caused by wind or incidental sounds
peculiar to each location, to each moment
(the chirping of cicadas causing
vibrations in a window pane, the sound
of a cargo ship in the distance,
faraway bird cries, the resonance of
an airplane coursing through the sky,
the vibrations of a thin iron sheet.
Tsunoda asks us to pause and explore
the often hidden sonic details of the
world around us, of the objects in our
living space, in the spaces of our cities
and harbours, of the air we
breathe, the very air that touches our
eardrums as we move from room to
room, street to street, from one space
to another.
Richard
di Santo, Incursion Org
Este disco de Tsunoda com título
português configura uma outra
forma de
entender a música concreta e
a recolha sonora “in situ”.
Por duas vias: 1) o
japonês não se limita a
gravar a paisagem, preferindo preparar
as situações
que vai captando (mesmo que por meios
extremamente simples), o que o coloca
no campo do instalacionismo, ou quase;
2) os muito diversificados parâmetros
sonoros sucedem-se de um modo tão
rápido (as peças são
relativamente curtas)
e integrado que a ideia de permanência
inerente ao género “soundscape”
é
completamente substituída por
uma inebriante impressão de mudança
e
transformação. «O
Respirar da Paisagem» resulta,
assim, num caleidoscópio de
sons, sempre em movimento e mutação,
sempre intrigante e vivo. Talvez em
detrimento do que se vem chamando de
“deep listening”, que vive
das durações
prolongadas e da reiteração,
mas proporcionando-nos a multidimensionalidade
do mundo acústico em que habitamos
e dos inúmeros processos da imaginação
para provocar ou ampliar determinadas
particularidades do som que nos passam
despercebidas. O que aqui escutamos
não será música
na medida em que não se trata
de “som organizado” e Toshiya
Tsunoda teve de lidar com o elemento
imprevisibilidade e com a impossibilidade
de controlar os eventos, mas
também é verdade que a
sua intervenção na preparação
destes quadros sónicos, no seu
tratamento em estúdio, na sua
montagem e no seu alinhamento tem tudo
a ver com a prática musical propriamente
dita. E no que ficamos? Em algo que
vem alterar os parâmetros estabelecidos
neste tipo de intervenção...
Rui
Eduardo paes
Su obra está siendo muy aclamada
por crítica y músicos
(incluido Aphex Twin
!) por su novedad y originalidad: una
aproximación diferente y radical
a la
música de campo (“field
recordings”) que a través
de sensores
piezo-cerámicos es capaz de captar
la vibración de los objetos de
una forma
única. De alguna forma nos descubre
la profundidad del paisaje sonoro que
nos rodea, y la oculta belleza de cada
detalle. RECOMENDADO.
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