speak no more about the leaves steve roden | cd | sirr015


Steve Roden once sang. And in the early 2000s he occasionally dusted down
his voice. It happened for Martin Archers "Angel High Wire" project and
it happens again for Roden’s own "Speak No More About the Leaves". The
title is taken from a poem by Stefan George used as lyrics by Schönberg
in his "Book of the Hanging Gardens". In the two versions of “Airria
(Hanging Garden” Roden’s frail, angelic voice sings in a murmur a string
of senseless syllables -- the poem has been cut down to syllables that have
been placed in alphabetical order (both forward and backward to form a
palindrome, hence the title “Airria”). Roden’s voice is accompanied by dark
minimal electronics: a three-note bass motif, soft high-pitched sine waves,
treated clicks and sonic dribbles of various kinds. All these elements taken
together form a dark, disquieting aria that would have Gothic tendencies if
it weren’t so resolutely a-typical. The two-note melody evokes a litany, a
prayer. The closest comparison is found in the most ambient pieces by The
Remote Viewers -- it has that kind of mood and an uncanny resemblance to
' Louise Petts’ detached sensuality. The title track, sandwiched between
the two versions of “Airria” (the second being darker and more song-like
than the first) transmutes the vowels from the text into a pentatonic score
for a small chime. The notes, treated, float in mid-air, filling the
listening space like fog. In his works Roden often chisels an awkward kind
of beauty. This album makes no exception and it may very well be easier to
approach than his previous, all-electronic efforts. Highly recommended.
François Couture, all music guide


"Intimacy and quiet intensity"
Wire Magazine (top 10/2003)

Almost lyrical and srprinsingly affecting. A captivating record and one of
Roden's most engaging.
Susanna Bolle, Grooves Magazine

Steve Roden has been given shit by the soundart world for being
"experimentally incorrect". Perhaps this is because the concepts behind
Roden's work are never so "conceptual"� or self-important that they become
the reason why the music is supposed to be interesting, good or enjoyable.
Roden's conceptual practice seems to be more of a private strategy for going
about his creative work -- for providing the compositional process with
specific possibilities and limitiations -- than it is a purposeful means for
earning validation from the experimental art/music world.
Take Speak No More About The Leaves...a sort of threeway meta-collaboration
with composer Arnold Schoenberg and poet Stefan George in which Roden
happens upon Schoenberg's use of George's versefor some lyrics to a piece of
music titled "The book of the HangingGardens", transplants a cutting from
this and cultivates a whole new life from it in his own work. The life of
this record, indeed, comes so much from Roden's own mouth as he sings
syllables taken from the original text and creates not so much a work of
high fallutin conceptual art as he does a beautiful song that might leave us
wondering if Mr. Roden hasn't also been listening to Eyeless in Gaza
somewhere along the way?
If you like the title of the record and appreciate the poetic impulses at
its origins you're already on your way to liking the music. Roden's voice is
extremely intimate as it sits in the edge of the speakers (seeming as if it
might be coming out of the phone you forgot to hang up), chanting into the
room as shining slivers of sound effervesce, chime and fall around it. It's
a world you can't quite place, probably because you haven't been so small
that you could ever fit inside the terrarium that contains it, yet you will
intuit something comforting and familiar as you use this record as a sort of
stethoscope for listening in on the processes of tiny lives taking root as
old ones decay and all but disappear
loren chasse, aquarius records

Hot on the heels, this time Steve Roden is inspired by Arnold Schonberg's
'The Book Of The Hanging Gardens' - and to that extent even more the poems
by Stefan George used by Schonberg. In three tracks Roden uses the text and
sound in his own way. In the first one he recites or sings the text but
syllable and the syllables placed in alphabetical order forwards and
backwards. In the second piece the vowel structure makes up the score for
striking five tones on a small chime. And then in the third piece the
singing on the first track is combined with samples of the Schonberg work.
This new work continues the recent Roden output which is more musical than
before. Especially in 'Airria (Hanging Garden)', the first piece on the CD,
there is a very musical thing going. Don't expect things to be popmusic, as
Roden has a very distinct minimalist approach to his music. Things move
always at a very slow pace, but not as a bunch of layered sounds being
nicely mixed, but rather as a nice musical flow. The closest Steve gets to
his older work is in the second piece 'Speak No More About The Leaves' with
it's closely layered sounds of similar origins. But the line set out with
his Sonoris release, earlier this year, the work of Steve Roden has gotten
more and more musically and this one is no exception - a damm fine work.
(FransdWaard, Vital Weekly)

Schönberg's The Book of the Hanging Gardens and the poetry of Stefan George
(used by Schönberg for his work) are the inspiration for this surprising new
release from Steve Roden. In "airria (hanging garden)" the verses are
broken, syllable by syllable, and rearranged in alphabetical order from
first to last. Roden not only "reads" the broken text, but sings it, his
voice hesitant, trembling slightly, but unmistakably strained in song.
Digital dust particles fall gently over the recordings, filters cause
interferences, brief interruptions, disruptions in the sound. The voice
seems distant in time, but close in space, a whisper in your ear, an
incomprehensible dream-narrative. The air becomes still, and silence is all
around, in spite of the sound. The second piece, "intended to repeat quietly
in a room," takes the same text but uses the vowels as a score for striking
five tones on a small chime, the resonances repeat and break, they occupy
spaces from left to right, they sing quietly, sadly to us as we sit
surrounded by them. The third and final piece is something of a reprisal of
the first, but this one is nocturnal, subterranean even, revealing the
shadows of shadows, a deep, low-end drone steps evenly under Roden's voice,
still strained in its haunting song, a tranquil, if unsettling mood. And
here, as I attempt to formulate my opinions, impressions of this work as a
whole, even my words break down into syllables, those syllables break down
further into letters, and those letters into indistinct lines on a page, in
these moments when language fails me.
Richard di Santo, Incursion Org

I didn't follow the suggestion written in the booklet and listened to this
record by headphones; this way I could single out every little nuance and
get any slight colour variation contained in Roden's complex and involving
sound world. Steve's creations are counteractive to that boring and sterile
academy often present in "composers" working in the sound installation area
- and similar. On the other hand, Roden mirrors that innocent face of a
studio alchemist whose new results can still be saluted with an ample smile.
Vocal sources, clicking, whirling electronics and looping fragments turn out
to be white-to-rose, never overwhelming or disenchanting, always looking for
a positive and certainly hearworthy sonic rainbow.
Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

As a basis for this new recording, multimedia Steve Roden was inspired by
Arnold Shoenberg's lyrical interpretation of the poems by Stefan George. His
small singing voice, sounds like a child's on the subtitled track "Airria
(Hanging Garden)" as it is reprocessed making way for this 14 minute
harrowingly sad lament. The icy surroundings romanticize these lilting and
layered tonalities. Roden embodies a supernatural prophet through his use of
appropriately immediate and empathic reference material. This is aural
performance art. On the title track a reverberating chime pitches high
frequencies that rotate and disappear. This piece was recently presented as
part of an installation at Pomona College Museum of Art . The editing leaves
short air pockets that are empty of recorded sound. What at times seems like
a soundtrack for a deserted forest on Mars, Speak No More About The Leaves
is a newly designed approach to how one might tune the sounds of the air
around (or inside) us. By using the vowel structure from the original
composition Roden has flexed sounds that are just this side of those audible
by other creatures. The second version of "Airria (Hanging Garden)" is a bit
creepier, recycling in slower motion, it was is started at the beginning of
this cycle. The vocal drags chillingly like a ball and chains. Overall I
feel a slow shuffle to the gallows. There is a speaking-in-tongues quality
to the concave gibberish that keeps your ears awake.
(Igloo Magazine, TJ Norris)

"Ainda que sem o brilhantismo de «Three Roots Carved to Look Like Stones»,
este novo disco de Roden agrada, primeiro que tudo, pela simplicidade das
suas coordenadas ˆ será até, muito provavelmente, o disco mais acessível de
todo o catálogo da portuguesa sirr. Inspiradas no «Book of the Hanging
Gardens» de Schoenberg, e muito especialmente nos poemas de Stefan George aí
utilizados, a primeira e a terceira peças deste CD têm como material de base
a própria voz de Steve Roden a ler esse libreto, sendo na última „sampladas‰
passagens da obra daquele compositor. A voz nunca é a natural e nem sempre a
reconhecemos, mas não surge de todo na composição que dá título ao álbum ˆ
neste caso, o músico e artista visual da Califórnia utilizou apenas as
vogais dos textos de George como elementos da partitura. Aconselha-se no
„booklet‰ a audição deste disco num volume mínimo e que se repita a segunda
faixa até o ouvinte achar que chega ˆ as duas dicas só não são
contraditórias porque a primeira não faz propriamente desta música uma
reedição do ambientalismo (onde isso já vai, no presente estágio da
electrónica) e a segunda tem subjacente uma imersão sonora que a
impossibilita de ser tomada como „fundo‰. Acontece, apenas, que os planos
sonoros deste disco são tão objectivos, tão específicos (algo que só
encontramos na pop, dado o primado da melodia) que ouvi-lo alto
torna-o demasiado redundante, perdendo em subtileza. «Broken Distant
Fragrant» dá conta, por sua vez, das colaborações que Roden tem desenvolvido
com os italianos Tu m‚, enviando-lhes materiais que eles trabalham ou
recebendo dos seus elementos, Rossano Polidoro e Emiliano Romanelli,
gravações que ele depois processa, remistura, corta e cola. O resultado,
estranhamente, está mais próximo da identidade musical dos Tu m' do que da
de Roden, ainda que as opções „lower case‰ deste estejam lá encadeadas, ao
nível da subtileza e da quietude."
Rui eduardo Paes