bagatellen | Francisco López + Michael Gendreau

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Francisco López + Michael Gendreau - TDDM (Sonoris)

By Al ⋅ February 16, 2009 ⋅

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Since 2006, many worthy labels have either fallen into depression or ceased production altogether. Franck Laplaine’s Sonoris continues to push out releases at a snail’s pace (roughly a disc per year) from a very personalized operation. A look back through the Sonoris catalog shows quite the range, and the envelope has widened even still with TDDM. Its predecessor, the self-titled Bowline (late 2007), was beautiful and airy, like unearthed early 20th C. composition, albeit with experimental materials. This latest release is a challenging step in another direction entirely.

Gendreau and Lopez’s set (two discs, with two tracks from each musician) is indeed musical, yet with nary an ounce of the traditional that can be found even in today’s expanse of technique- and ground-building. There was some foreshadowing years back (our aughts, not Russolo’s) that pointed to a rise in field recordings and an enlightened embrace of the raw environment. Now that we are relatively immersed in the use of such recordings — its incorporation is happening all over the map, literally – the time is nigh to re-examine/reconsider just what it means, relative to what musicians feel must be expressed. In a recent discussion here, it was noted that catalogs tend to be a couple of years behind the now. Punctuating that case, the recordings here were captured from ‘92 to ‘04, with final masters completed in 2005. Perhaps the artists felt there wasn’t a perceived audience for such material in 2001. Or maybe in getting re-acquainted with their recordings, a concern arose for the proper documentation of such experiments. Listening to TDDM, we’re not likely to find any convenient answers, much less a breakthrough, but it’s a pleasant ambiguity nonetheless.

Michael Gendreau has been geeking on ma-made sound sources for years now, most notably in the West Bay Area’s Crawling With Tarts, where dc motors and linkage belts took an early place alongside more accepted instrumentation. These days he’s involved with installations and exploitations — with a keen interest in the rumblings of industrial equipment and machines, and the rooms and loading bays they inhabit, examining the emissions down to the micropascal (man-crush developing here). López joins him with his own adjacent study, stepping away from the static storms of his electronics-oriented work. The two have collaborated before with the same approach, but TDDM is a project specific to the sounds of some Asian factories, with Gendreau sampling the room, and López the machines.

“T921″ and “M928″ belong to Gendreau, presumably named for having been recorded in Taiwan and Malaysia, respectively. “T921″ captures plainly the sound environment of a single factory, the microphones placed in such a way to pull the faintest reverberations from the room, yet with incredible detail to accommodate the recording of multiple, individual seeds making their fateful way along and off of a conveyor belt. The variety of sound in this track is compelling — the sequences are placed such that Gendreau has designed a seamless 30+ minute “best of” for the day in the life of one musty industrial bay. “”M928″ is more rhythm-oriented. An equally long and robust piece, Gendreau focuses here on the pulse of the machinery in some astonishing sonic depth. These are big, powerful machines playing kill-by-numbers, and we play voyeur to an array of functionary dispositions: the cyclical carrying out of production requirements, and transitional segues marking start-ups, shut-downs and mode shifting.

López samples the machines themselves, be it individual moving parts or the cavities encasing critical synchronized components. In the process he’s used (I presume) an omni-directional mic to marry the internal with the external happenings. We’re treated to spurious IC communications that issue orders in Asian tongues, as well as working bells and machine-related sirens. López chooses to leave no sense of mystery to the environment. While there is no mistake that Gendreau and López are in the same business here, the latter’s recordings come off more tactile, effectively displacing his subjects and planting them right here in our homes. “D138″ contains a fairly extensive segment with stereo-effected motor whines and the ventilation that serves to cool the gear. On its own this bit is both meditative and disorienting (another reason earplugs are a necessity in such workplaces), but reality snaps back with a gentle IC alert.

The tracks aren’t without a small number of unintended captures. Wind noise is clearly heard as a group of workers walk past one of the microphones, and in at least one segment the noise floor shifts as adjustments are made to accommodate the sudden halt of machinery. But “accidents” are often as integral to the listening experience as the choice bits, lending some individuality and reminding of the sincere interests and efforts of the composer. Together these four pieces deliver something archival and undeniably musical. It’s a success in itself that two individuals (one in Madrid, one in San Francisco) should independently pursue their own intentions, share the same underlying interests, and come up with such a unique and listenable collaborative project.

~Alan Jones