feb05

An inversion of ambient music, co-compositions such as Gwanadon (co-composition no. 4) augment and accompany the sounds of daily life with piquant tones and gently abrading textures not normally associated with music or heard amid the sounds of everyday life.

From the forthcoming album Intermissions with the Orchestra, Boston Bolshoi is from my collection of covertly recorded orchestral intermissions and warm-ups.

I recorded Hong Kong Supermarket NYC, Waiting for the Q33, and Open Carrier: Citywide One Manhattan while in New York for the RNC protest in late August/early September 2004. The first two are straight-up phonographies, unedited and unprocessed in any way.

Culled from 15 hours of police scanner recordings, "Open Carrier: Citywide One Manhattan" is a section of "Sowing the Seeds of the Second American Civil War: Live at the RNC Protest September 2-August 28, 2004."

Police parlance for a radio that has been inadvertently left on in talk/transmit mode, an "open carrier" stymies broadcast traffic, leaving so-called "dead air" to delineate sudden gaps, smudges of hiss, a hazy drone, beeping alerts, fragmented words, quick phrases, recessed conversations, and other unexpected artifacts.

For this recording, originally broadcast in mono, I placed the right channel 180 degrees out of phase. When summed as a mono signal, this unedited, otherwise unprocessed, stereo track reveals a phase-dependent undertow of roiling pulses, an admittedly impoverished encoded concession to ears that seek more typical "electro-acoustic" music.

Christopher DeLaurenti (1967-2071, USA) is a composer, improvisor, phonographer, and music writer. About his work, he writes, "My music, the offspring of my love affair with sound, incorporates murky atmospheres, unusual field recordings, everyday speech, and an array of instruments deployed in maniacal recombinant polyphony. I seek not only to capture the ordinary and extraordinary sounds of everyday life, but to bear witness to current crises that touch my conscience and impel me to respond."

He has appeared on a few compilations (Hearing Place, Northwest Triptych, Owasso Night Atlas) as well as on several solo albums including Three Camels for Orchestra (unAmerican Archive), The night I met Maria C_____ (Locust), N30: Live at the WTO (unAmerican Archive), and the Sand Point Sound Gazetteer (SPACE) [distributed by and/OAR] . Some of Christopher's music resides at www.delaurenti.net along with many music-related essays and articles.