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| a2z blender | format: online release - released: 2003 | label: EARLabs
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This work was constructed with voices as the sole material. It has been downloadable through the EARLabs site for quite a while but now you can buy it at top quality. The material has been remastered for your pleasure. CD-r comes with original cover design.
Price = 10 euro's all inc. |
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| REVIEWS: Ios Smolders - A-Z Blender 荷兰电子原声作曲家Jos Smolders以Ios Smolders的代号发表的这张“A-Z Blender”，通篇以人声作为声音样本进行创作，某些作品更是曾用作现场装置展时的混音作品。拥有IOSS、DJ SCSI、Ios Smolders多个创作代号的Jos Smolder青年时就读荷兰代夫特大学建筑学系，但自小已沉迷用卡带录音机作声音剪切的试验。现时活跃于地下音乐界的Smolders除曾担任前卫刊物《Vital Magazine》的主编，同时也是荷兰著名实验乐团THU20的成员。 Japanese site altmusic It seems that web only music is becoming somewhat of a trend, which creates quite a lot of difficulties for the music indusrty to cope with, protection of copyright being the main source of worry. Now I am the last person to deny artists their rightful incomings, but I am very happy with these recent developments, because it also creates giant opportunities for the less fortunate artists to get their work published on a large scale. OK, so much for politics, on to the task at hand. A2Z Blender is an album, although it is not presented in that format. All tracks are based on the human voice and all its different expressive qualities. In that sense one could say that Smolders is returning to his 'roots': one of his first solo releases was a tape called Mama and featured the same sound source. A long time has passed since and the skills of Mr. Smolders have gradually improved over the years. A2Z Blender is an excellent work, giving us the full range of his capacity as a composer. The first track is a very gentle piece with some females singing now and then, whereas the second one gives us broken and cut up voices. The piece itself is also cut up and pretty ruthless in its atmosphere. The third track deals more with language and its theatrical or pathetic aspects. There is a lot of reverb added to (stretched) words as 'liefde' (love), 'gevoel' (emotion) and 'verlangen' (desire). I cannot escape from the impression that Smolders is playing some ironic tricks on us here. Tracks four and five are kind of interludes, followed by six featuring radio and telephone voices getting into a frenzy halfway through before turning into a very dreamy and atmospheric piece with an occasional small outburst. Track seven is a real beauty: words have gone through extensive surgery here, having either the vowels or the consonants cut out, creating the drones and cuts with which the piece is constructed. Wonderful indeed. Track eight is a typical Smolders work: lots of cuts and silences and subtle tones leading us to the end. Not the strongest one on the album though. Track nine is basically a remix of sound material of The Institute of Screamscape Studies. Not surprising, since its 'director', Gregory Whitehead, is well known for the use of the human voicein his work. The piece starts off quite subdued with faint screams and quiet noises and doesn't release its full potential until halfway through. But then it starts to get going: screams get louder and more frequent and a high pitched whining sounds takes care of the rest. Still, everything is more or less under control, it seems. The albums ends with track ten, which is sort of a short extra of track number nine. All in all this is really worth downloading. At the website you can listen to real audio 'previews' (it's about time to come up with an equivalent for this visual statement) and if you like them you can contact Ios Smolders personally for downloads. This way you can also have a chat with him......( Vital Weekly | Roel Meelkop |
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