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Echo-system. MCD magazine originated from passion for electronic music: free parties, raves, sound-systems, clubbing… The editorial staff took root in this fertile ground, where musicians experimented with free culture and collaborative performances, mixing technological development with artistic creation.

Now that the creative industries are appropriating works made by open-source communities, often without crediting the engineers and developers involved in these participative processes (code is art), MCD, as an independent and associative media, emphasizes its editorial integrity. For the past 10 years, they have promoted those who pass on knowledge, the movers and shakers (artists, festival directors, producers, exhibition curators…) who build bridges between art and science, between electroacoustic and electronic, between contemporary art and popular culture, between amateur practices and art market.

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ABOUT THE ARTICLE:

SOUND CREATIONS : SOUNDWALK

An adventurer of postmodern times, Stephan Crasneanscki carries nomadism in his blood, from French origin but born in Odessa, he later settled in New York where he founded the Soundwalk Collective whose tenth anniversary of sound creation is currently being cele- brated by the British radio Resonance FM. Soundwalk has forged its experience in producing some twenty audio trails throughout international capitals, focusing on des- tinations as unlikely a stroll in the South Bronx with Afri- ka Bombaataa… In 2010, Soundwalk went out to meet the public, leaving their home port. A final poem, Kill the ego, a film, a performance, a soundtrack, the raw and sensuous energy were colliding within the city noise, shady conversations, relieving lashes of the whip and doors gnashing… The voice of Ginsberg, of a MC, words of women, late, very late at night.
The constant life impulse that New York City summons, the offensive clashing of equals gave way to composi- tions whose pace is reduced by the swaying of waves, where enigmatic wandering words fade and become con- crete sound material, absorbed in layers of memories saved from the wind. Fascinated by the sea and its mythologies, Stephan Crasneanscki embarked his side- kicks — Dug Winningham, Simone Merli and Kamran Sadeghi — in the footsteps of Ulysses.

Two years on, they are heading down the path of Jason and the Argonauts: the Black Sea, whose tragic and bloody history gave rise to a series of performances, a film by Vincent Moon and a book-object recently published by Dis-voir[2]: Medea a dark, mysterious sound composi- tion, reminiscent of the melancholy power of the deep house, where, as if pierced by a ray of sunshine in a November sky, the singing of woman with a guitar, the reading of a poem, an excerpt from an opera intercept- ed from the radio will interfere…

Sound mapping

The whispers, the customs arrests or the conversations of smugglers, hijacked by Soundwalk’s scanners, reveal as much about the geopolitical complexity of this sub- merged enclave than any real risk-taking from “these sounds fishermen” who apeared from a another world. Like a sponge, the boat barded with antennae stretched over multiple radio frequencies absorbed day and night the airwaves intercepted between Istanbul and Odessa. The trip lasted for two months. Daily, with discernment and method, sound designers would record and label the fragments collected after each scan as many open nets, cast on a 24 h basis.

We use fairly standard techniques of field recording, says Stephan Crasneanscki and then we compose music with them. Our approach remains very impressionistic. In both of these projects related to the sea, Ulysses syndrome and Medea, it is about addressing a territory: 50 miles from the coast, the geography has not changed for centuries, on the water we only hear the sound of the sea, the primal sound, while the waves tell a contemporary human tale …

Ambient scenography

To transcribe the invisible, to experience the inaudible, these are the new frontiers towards which Soundwalk’s latest projects point. From the desert of Rub al Khali to the depths of the Amazon, from the mythical DC10 club in Ibiza to Berghain, the old power station in Berlin, each set is a new experiment, a shared experience with the audience, in which the group tries to reproduce these moments of grace where sounds collapse and accident arise.

In Paris, during La Nuit Blanche it is on a dozen, simul- taneously launched, record decks that Le syndrome d’Ulysse (Ulysses’ syndrome) was performed, each vinyl matching a type of sounds recorded with various scan- ners. In MuCEM, in Marseille, next October the piece will be performed as two 24 hours sets. More musical, up to a total abstraction, Medea was created from very short 3 or 4 seconds samples reworked out of thousands of hours snatched from the waves. Played as an audio- visual performance at the Centre Pompidou, it turned into a happening on a barge in Lille.

For each country, we replicated the recordings on tapes that we had left to run for hours on old Nagras[3], Stephan Cras- neanscki explains. The tapes were running face to face – Romania facing Georgia, for example – a natural transfer took place by friction to create a kind of organic mix recom- posing a sound ocean pretty close to the lived experience on the boat. Lying on the ground, the public could immerse themselves in the gentle, restless, hypnotic wave, whilst the performers had already left the room[4].

Vibrational experiments

Fom Peru, Stephan Crasneanscki, (supported by France Culture’s Creative Radiophonic Workshop), brought back a soundtrack and a movie: Ayahuasqueros based on a psychedelic experience provided by a Ayahuasca plant decoction. The vibration of the plant would express through the Icaros chants performed by Indian shamans as gateways leading the awake man, from the vegetal realm to the unconscious layers of the brain. Between documentary and visual poetry the Amazon experience is part of the Soundwalk path as a further step towards the exploration of sound as a physical experience.

The Berghain club sound system and its concrete walls in Berlin have become the pulsating heart of their cur- rent experiments. As they were starting with the melody of the building to compose its counterpoint, these son- ic archaeologists used suction mikes placed in every nook and cranny, to record the pulse of the building, they remixed it live at the Panorama bar just after concerts. Between electronica and atmospheric techno dub Berghain Vibrations & résonnances ironically evokes the long sequence in Einstürzende Neubauten’s Pelikanol / Silence is sexy… Sheer coincidence?

Article writed by Veronique Godé. Editor of MCD.

Photo by Dasha Redkina