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Michael Gendreau
55 pas de la ligne au no 3
23five002
REVIEWS:
Sound
Projector
Issue 11, 2003
For this release, Californian sound artist Gendreau has modified
old record-players and souped them up like custom cars - what we're
hearing is a slowly rotating vinyl disk with a heavy old tonearm,
to produce a monstrous grind. He has no interest whatsoever in the
content of the records. All he wants is the 'dead' part of the pressing,
resulting in a kind of pure inertness. The equipment sometimes howls
in protest at this maltreatment, but what can be done about it?
Nothing! It's a simple process art that totally transcends its methods
of production, and offers a glimpse of something beyond, something
bizarrely affecting. It may not be an entirely heart-warming vision.
When I first saw the cover photo of this 'blackly' packaged release,
I assumed immediately that it depicted an awful abyss of doom..
and endless culvert running underneath the very bowels of Hades.
I couldn't wait to hear the abysmal sonic message that might accompany
this despatch from such a darkened, Saturnine realm.
Of course, the cover photo is nothing of the sort - merely a close-up
of the micro-grooves of distressed old 78 RPM records, one of the
artefacts abused by Gendreau in pursuit of his diabolical aims.
But nothing dispels the oppressive feeling generated by this relentless
sound-art... of the two long tracks, "Two Worlds For Now"
is certainly aligned with the school of thought that desires to
bury the listener alive in smothering layers of oppressive, heavy
sound. A claustrophobia-inducing sensation begins in the ears and
quickly spreads to the entire body. Don't play this on a winter's
night when you're snowed in at home, or cabin fever will set in
immediately. The title work, which combines a sense of ruthless
mathematical precision and somehow suggests an ultra-efficient railroad
engineer measuring damage to his tracks, comprises at least two
or more of these turntable experiments running simultaneously, or
overdubbed in the studio, and thus produces a slightly more sonically
varied effect. Powerful stuff - the single idea is squeezed for
everything it's got.
Gendreau would probably appreciate my mistaken apprehension of the
cover photo, as "repression of the recognizability of any particular
tool, medium, or instrument" is what he's all about. Apparantly,
he's produced entire operas and miniature symphonies with Suzanne
Dycus in Crawling With Tarts, using only sets of old 78 records
and 9-volt motors. But never has the source been cunningly disguised
in an attempt to 'fool' the listener - it's just rendered into something
totally unfamiliar. Besides exploring unused 'dead spaces' on his
records, he also amplifies the motors, gears, and belts, and gears
of his old turntables using devices called accelerometers. These
are far more sensitive than boring old contact mics, so the slightest
bump or mistake in the process causes sonic havoc - "when Gendreau
inevitably drops the needle on the record, the whole cavity of the
turntable resonates with those vibrations inscribed in the vinyl,"
says the press release, audibly slavering with delight. For real
fetishists, close-up full-colour photographs of the modified turntables
are included in the CD booklet, presented with a near-pornographic
attention to detail... cor, check out the tone-arm on that! As the
press release points out, this work has nothing whatever to do with
DJ turntabling, nor does it align itself with the avant-turntabling
artists such as Jesse Paul Miller, Philip Jeck, or Christian Marclay,
all of whom have some interest (no matter how remote) in the content
of the original records they use. Nor does Gendreau share the passion
that Climax Golden Twins have for old, scratchy 78 records and the
ghostly voices from the past that float off them - this record is
all about machinery, rotation, and industrial grind; and it ploughs
its narrow furrow with single-minded purpose. - Ed Pinsent
The Wire
November 2002, Issue 225
San Francisco-based Michael Gendreau is most widely known as a member
of the surface-noise duo Crawling With Tarts. On his current soundwork,
he plumbs the secret frequencies of seasoned audio hardware, its
hum and rumble, and the ratchieting and cranking that lurk within
the mechanisms of antiquated turntables. An acoustic diagnostician
by profession, he applies new technology to old, retrieving a subliminal
soundworld of listening history.
Beyond archaeology and a firm grasp of the physics of vibration,
his art of noises involves discovery of forms. The opening "Two
Worlds For Now" has a murmuring drone and clicking switches;
it thickens, creaks, and mimics animal cries before settling into
a mechanical groove until abruptly halted when someone cuts the
power supply. The long title track imports deep drone otherness
into the zone of vinyl splatter and hiss. A grey ghost of turntablism
is submerged in squalls of distortion and interference. But the
noise is primary. Appearing like traces on decaying Edison cylinders,
human voices vary the texture and add decoration. The real substance
springs from the equipment's repetitive purr, revolutionary churnings,
shock assaults, and shrill emissions. There may be an underlying
family resemblance to the 'threshold of audibility' school of exploratory
electronica, but Gendreau's choice of spindle and drive belt, rather
than microelectronics, brings refreshingly graphic results. - Julian
Cowley
Brainwashed
October 6, 2002
This record is nothing if not meditative.
While pushing the normally suppressed and inaudible whirs and clicks
of the mechanical innards of your favorite turntable into the foreground,
Michael Gendreau has curiously pushed the attention on the actual
sound output of his recording to the back. My zen-like state of
concentration aside, it was virtually impossible for me to listen
to the opening piece (one of two long tracks that makes up the album)
without wondering where the sounds came from, how they were recorded,
and what this all said about listening to the playback device instead
of the playback. The use of a turntable to produce sounds other
than those reproduced from a vinyl record is far from novel, but
Gendreau spends a full 16:50 trying to beat the idea of these hidden
sounds into our head. A constant drone that could be the inside
of the tone arm amplified to a low roar, reminded me a great deal
of the results of a naive experiment I once conducted by placing
a microphone in front of a fan and letting it record for half an
hour. It's interesting for about two minutes, then you realize that
your ears have intentionally filtered this kind of sound out all
of your life for a reason: it's boring. The second (and longer)
of the two pieces finds Gendreau more actively affecting the results
of his micro-scale recordings. Clocking in at 35:45, it's still
not a piece for anyone deeply engaged in the Nintendo Generation,
and the piece could easily be broken into smaller, more digestible
segments. Structurally, it works like listening to a record as the
record player's various internal sound quirks are explored episodically
like grooves in a record that isn't there. The absent needle and
wax are referenced in the way the track picks up an idea, exploits
a sound or natural rhythm for a while, then drops the idea and skips
onto the next. After nearly an hour of listening for the compositional
touch that Gendreau added to make these more than simple field recordings,
I came to realize that maybe the music was not, in itself, the point.
The only question that remains for me is this: why wasn't this released
on vinyl? - Matthew Jeanes
Absurd
March 2002, Issue 5
[speaking of rather droning & noise stuff… well, 23five
inc, offered us recently 2 new additions in its releases catalogue.
The first one being 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 by michael
gendreau known to most of you as a member of the us crawling with
tarts outfit. a project who in my opinion had a more allow me to
say "sophisticated" sort of experimental sound which you either
loved or hated till their memorable "motorini elettrici" 2x7" on
the us gyttja label a few years ago which was one of their greatest
releases up to date (& highly recommended as well). 55 pas…
was recorded between 00-01 using as a main source turntables or
to be more specific, old turntables’s motors in order to create
his soundscapes… being as well into manipulated turntables
sounds too am always interested in listening such experiments and
concerning michael’s case must admit that I found the result
stunning enough. michael manages to create a unique ambiance w/
the manipulated sounds of the motors, sometimes droning where some
sort of scratches of vinyls, etc sounded more as if coming from
a distance (something which I fancied a lot in this case) or at
others despite the manipulated (& more noisy) result I had the
feeling of a more primitive sound coming out of it, a detail which
personally attracts me, cos as I mentioned above am dying for such
"bizarre" or "primitive" (or even call it "naïve," "static"
or whatever) sounds created either by turntables themselves or vinyls
"melted" on turntables. so worked out for me as a mesmerizing release…
Undergound Studios
republished through Igloo
Magazine, Rewound Vol. 1
23five Incorporated is a San Francisco non-profit organization founded
in 1993 and dedicated to the education and discussion of sound as
a medium in the public arena. This is the first of two releases
by the label this year and certainly heightens one's awareness of
the possibilities in the ongoing dialogue of sound and its infinite
sources. On his debut solo effort, Bay Area experimenter Michael
Gendreau (Crawling With Tarts), is in fine form (or reduction of
it so to speak). The two track set includes Two Worlds for Now,
a disconnected horizon line whose plug gets pulled at its conclusion.
While exploring the unexpected potential of turntable motors and
mechanisms Gendreau has ruptured some preconceptions of tools underneath
which would ordinarily be used to listen to any old vinyl. This
deconstructionist approach to undersized sound makes for a recording
that is almost, in essence, what is "left" of sound, the
resonance. This is an atypical ambient release, with a low-end sizzle
and hum in a vacuous space with minor mechanical goings-on. In its
puzzling bellows, the 35-minute title track leads the listener astray
as it rambles in its physics and amplified world of micro-sound.
Here there are hints of data transfer and voice channeling that
has at once a startling approach and tectonic finish. The repetitive
churning of teeny motorized units, in their climbing, distorted
frequencies will have you hanging on each transition. Some of the
finer sources play with the idea of scale, while at times these
palm-sized worlds grow into 300 foot tall super coasters, and in
moments they are again transformed smaller than a pinhead. 23five
is ready to challenge our ears with visionary work that pushes the
barriers of the noise/sound envelope. - TJ Norris
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