Intercepted From Air

Meteorological Avant-Transmissions, Intercepted From Air
Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory; Luc Ferrari's Les Anecdotiques

by Don Allred
August 2nd, 2004 3:30 PM Issue 31

Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory
Staubgold
Luc Ferrari
Les Anecdotiques
Sub Rosa


Avantricity's freebirds (Matmos, Autechre, Fennesz, many more) ride the
soundtrack of David Toop's new book, Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory.
Right channel clusters, left one cloisters, then they're passing through (before and after falling and settling for) each other. In time as well as space, when (b) connects with (a) and (x) and (?) and (!) and some sounds better numbered.

Disc 2 is mostly ghostly instruments; Disc 1 is more: for inst., the singing

fry and fray of Alvin Lucier's "Sferics." ("Natural radio-frequency emissions
in the ionosphere, radiated from nearby or distant lightning," Toop notes.)
One weatherbird's ambushed by street sounds, but they're countered by
visionary description; violence gets safely aestheticized. The artist as museum
guard? Where is she later, when I hear a shovel blade in oily gravel, too near a
hypnotic/hypnotized-sounding muezzin?

On Luc Ferrari's Les Anecdotiques, voices are talking, frequently in female
and French, beware. (American's also spoken, in Chicago and "dancehall Texas.")
Often near bird-bordered beaches, while engines drive up and away.
Eventually, doors slam and then beat on—doors of a sea tunnel, turns out. Anecdotal,
yas: L.A. swings in and out of meaning, like a pendulum do.
Go listen to your pillow and be glaaad.

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