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Los VIAJES Imaginarios (Imaginary JOURNEYS) takes this premise and proposes to venture into exploring sonorities, suggesting spaces, climates and luminosities that become abstract landscapes, and invites us to travel through them using attentive and sensitive listening as a vehicle. Laura Molina’s compositional process begins with the recording of monophonic sounds from her cello, playing it with extended and conventional techniques. After a meticulous selection of these recordings, she categorises and digitally processes each sound. Once she has obtained a diverse and extensive collection, she randomly chooses some of them and combines them as a starting point to continue the composition, adding, superimposing and chaining others, inspired by what she perceives and guides her body. In this way she creates ambient textures and colourings, a kind of tactile listening, detached from any rhythm and structure.

Composed and produced by: Laura Molina
Mastering: Pablo Bas
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Acknowledgements
A Pablo Bas, María Ceña, Verónica Mastrosimone
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CALATHEA experimenta
experimenta@calathea.ar

CREDITOS

Idea, Production: Ana Rodríguez, Robert Da Silva.
Artistic and Associate Producer: Franco Falistoco.
Research: Ana Rodríguez, Robert Da Silva.
Guitar: Enrique Rodríguez Viera.
Mix: Ana Rodríguez.
ReCut + Binaural Remix: Franco Falistoco.

Mastering: CALATHEA experimenta.
URUGUAY/Argentina — 2023

CALATHEA experimenta ©️
experimenta@calathea.ar

“In Mexico I came across a book and a stone, on these two elements found traces of a very complex country”
This is a job that has as a starting point at the exploration of the concept of time from the Nahuatl, native people from central Mexico.

For Laurette Séjourné & Esperanza Rascón.

All parts of “The Year of the Rabbit” are based on the book “The Náhuatl thought encrypted in the calendars” of Laurette Séjourné.

Tracks:
I. Año 1 Caña – Ce Acatl
II. Año 1 Pedernal – Ce Tecpatl
III. Año 1 Casa – Ce Calli

Interview: Esperanza Rascón.
Sound Objects:
-Wires
-Braches from trees.
-Well modified.
-Stones.
-Virtual piano.

No conventional instruments were used on this piece.

All sounds are produced with sound objects modified through computer.
Year: 2010.

Selection to the Radiophonic Creation Day 2011, France.

CREDITS

This work that joins the CALATHEA Experimenta catalogue has been remastered from its original wav file.

First published in 2009, contained in various repositories under CC-CL licenses and always distributed in lossy audio formats.

The mastering process was assisted by the composer herself.

Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta
experimenta@calathea.ar

Pléyade is a word that comes from Latin for a group of people who are outstanding in an activity that is usually artistic. In Greek mythology, Las Pléyades were seven sisters who metamorphosed into doves and then became stars. The constellation bearing this name is also known as the Seven Sisters or the Seven Goats. The name Pléyades also refers to a group of seven Alexandrian tragic poets of the 4th-3rd centuries BC and in France, during the Renaissance, to another group of prominent poets.

Now, Pléyade is also this album that compiles acousmatic and electroacoustic works, a sound poem and soundscapes created with different composition and elaboration techniques. All of them are the result of creative processes carried out by their authors and accompanied in the space of the Taller de Música y Arte Sonoro directed by Pablo Bas, which are here embodied in works that, like spiralling circles, we hope will be fed back to the public who listen to them.

Pablo Bas.

CREDITS:

Mastering: it was carried out in two stages. The first part in Pablo Bas’ studio and then in the Laboratorio de Investigación y Producción Musical del Centro Cultural Recoleta [LIPM CCR] with Gabriel Lucena as technician and the support of FMyT [Fundación Música y Tecnología].

Cover image: Francisco Bas.

Cross-talk and frequency drift strike a chord in this work. The intensive use of cassette tape in the structure and creation of his own compilations became his own works. And in connection with loops and raw editing and frequency losses, creating a sonic organic.

CREDITOS

Composed, produced and performed by Shaun Robert.
Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta
www.calathea.ar
experimenta@calathea.ar

The first two pieces are pure electroacoustic, while Pacha Mama is a mixed piece for male and female voice, together with various instruments and percussions. The electroacoustic supports of the three pieces were composed and realised at the Studio du Nord of the University Lille III.

While lvy Mara He’y is the piece that complements this selection of works by the artist, which was awarded an Honourable Mention at the SONOM International Competition in Monterrey, Mexico in 2013.

Vuelo Iniciático (Initiatory Flight) is musically inspired by the rites and legends of the toba theogony, evoking the initiatory journey of the sorcerer, who, transformed into an eagle, flies over the three cosmological strata of the world. The waters, the heavens and the earth represent the three emanations of the same truth, a knowledge declined three times —like the truths of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus— thus indicating the parallel and interacting presence of the physical, psychic and astral world.

About the Works

Las Aguas Abismales (2008)

1st prize in the International Competition IMEB Bourges/France 2009.

The beginning of the triptych is an invocation, introducing the voice of a Toba sorceress recounting the origins of the world. This first piece takes the form of a melody with accompaniment, and the composition is produced, similarly to Eimert’s Epitaph, from the loss and recovery of the semantic recognition of voice and text. In addition to the voice, the piece uses as sources a series of instruments from the Toba tradition (flutes, quenas, erkes, rainsticks, drums, etc.) as well as some instruments from Western music (flute, various percussions). All these sound sources were recorded and transformed through various electroacoustic study techniques: resonance filters and spectrum attenuation, shuffling, sound stretching, speed and pitch changes, etc.

The piece will find its formal resolution through the magical summoning of water.

It is in the abysmal depths of the water that the traveller on the Tufa initiatory path confronts the demons of hell. From this struggle, if he emerges victorious, he will gain the wealth of knowledge; this combat with the beings of the aquatic underworld is necessary because it is what ends and begins the eternal cycle of life.

Los Cielos Infinitos (2010)

In contrast to the dynamism and the lively and restless character of Las aguas abismales, the second piece of the triptych is an interlude characterised by the re-exploitation of the sound materials used in a frankly static and meditative context. Los cielos infinitos is a grave and solemn piece, evoking the atmosphere of a prayer. The voice of the sorceress reappears sporadically, recalling the narrative element, the backbone of the triptych as a whole. As a preponderant figure we find the presentation of the ocarina, an instrument that develops a series of melodic figures in glissando.

Pacha Mama (2011)

Work selected to represent Argentina at the UNESCO International Composers’ ROSTRUM in Finland 2014.

Pacha Mama is the embodiment of the electro-acoustic source in performers, which is realised taking into account that the ultimate state of the Toba initiation is the transformation into another being, another person than the man of knowledge.

The piece is conceived for two amplified solo voices (female: the sorceress, male: the initiate), ocarina, indigenous flute, Tibetan singing bowl, various percussions and octophonic electroacoustic support.

The voices of the two performers perform part of the repertoire contained in the electroacoustic medium, producing a varied counterpoint with it. To this are added individual actions not contained in the electroacoustic medium, for example:

• Mongolian diphonic singing,
• Ultra high-pitched falsetto,
• The recitation.

Ivy Mara He’y (2012)

While lvy Mara He’y is the piece that complements this selection of works by the artist, which received an Honourable Mention in the SONOM international competition in Monterrey, Mexico in 2013.

The title of the work, in the Guaraní language, means The Land Without Evil, the lost paradise of the native peoples of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. The work is an invocation, a shamanic rite to protect mother earth.

CREDITS

Composed, produced and performed by María Cristina Kasem.
Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta
www.calathea.ar
experimenta@calathea.ar

It is possible that one of the keys to the act of creation is to grasp what there is in common between elements of the world that at first sight —or at first listening— are unrelated. To grasp the link between elements where before, apparently, there was no link constitutes a restructuring of the perception of that very world in which things were found. Levi Strauss in his book “Savage Thinking” posited the differences between the do-it-yourselfer and the engineer and drew an analogy with the differences between mythical and rational thinking. In mythical thinking —as in that of the bricoleur— elements are taken and isolated from their contexts and reconfigured into a new one. In rational thinking —as in that of the engineer— a project is proposed and the starting point is raw materials. The same thing that happens with bricolage happens with the concrete music invented by Pierre Schaeffer, one starts from sound structures taken from “reality” and puts them in dance to create a discourse. The works on this album are based on this intention: to enrich our perception of the world and perhaps, in this very act, to expand our openness to it.

On the other hand, these works —made in the 21st century— constitute a late revival of mid-20th century musique concrète. The advent of the personal computer has made the creation of musique concrète more accessible. The ease with which sound material can be manipulated and transformed opens up the possibility of attending to the material aspects of sound and the formal dimensions of the work without major inconvenience.

These works were constructed with simple sound editing software. Almost all the materials are fragments of recorded sounds and, to a lesser extent, cuttings of other music. Also, very few processes were applied: the material is hardly modified, the richness of the original sound is preserved. If it is not easy to identify the source in what you hear, it is mostly due to the overlapping and juxtaposition of the materials.

Another of the intentions behind the composition of this selection of works is the articulatory processes. The form of these works is the result of the articulations and the different operations they involve.

Miniatura Concreta N° 1.

For electroacoustic media (2003). It was premiered on August 16, 2003, at the Teatro Municipal Gregorio de Laferrere in Morón. It is the author’s first electroacoustic work. It has a symphonic character —it seems to imitate an orchestra— and consists of two parts where the second is a variant of the first.

Gígnomai.

For electroacoustic media (2004). Premiered on March 6th 2004 at the Auditorium of the Escuela Superior de Música de la Provincia de Misiones, Posadas. Ciclo Otras Músicas II, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la UnaM. It was designated as a “Recommended Work” in 2004 in the competition co-organised by FARME and Radio Nacional Clásica and also selected in the international competition organised by the Destellos Foundation, 2013 edition. It is a programmatic work, narrating the passage from the arid, uninhabited to the human expressed by the choral voices at the end.

Electroacoustic Guilt. Para medios electroacústicos (2011)

Finalist in the International Electroacoustic Music Competition at the Destellos Foundation, 2012 edition. It is a rhapsodic work. It consists of six parts. Each part is static, the movement is created from the displacement of its elements.

Reflujo de lago en el río. Para medios electroacústicos (2016-2017)

Premiered on 3 March 2017 as part of the seventh edition of Nuevas músicas por la memoria: Teatro Margarita Xirgu/Untref. The idea of this work is the non-resolution of tension. Things do not end up being resolved and through a “reflux” they return to the process of growing tension.

CREDITS:

Composed, performed and produced by Claudio Gabriel Eiriz.
Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta
www.calathea.ar
experimenta@calathea.ar

DÍPTICO by Jorge Gómez A. is composed of two works, MINOTAURO en Red, on an imaginative variation of the anthropomorphic/mythological figure of the Minotaur in the coetaneity and Paseo de ABEJORRO, radioart from the sounds of the bumblebee deconstructed in an imaginative journey through soundscapes intervened in material abstraction.

CREDITS:

Composed, produced and arranged by Jorge Alberto Gómez Aponte.
Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta
www.calathea.ar
experimenta@calathea.ar

It starts from orality, freeing poetry and its medium from language, from its limiting function of representing reality in order to be itself; it starts from a reality, thus creating a semantic universe independent of language.

This album “SOUND Poetry [Huellas Audibles]” is composed of 5 sound poems created from the reciprocal and simultaneous exchange of visual poems thought from the sonic in an alchemy of words, noises, letters, sounds and, in the centre of listening: silence.

Words, letters, phonemes fragmented, cut, severed, reduced, compressed… are heard as meanings, perceived as forms of a visual and phonic nature at the same time.

CREDITS:

Composed and produced by Amarilys Quintero Ruiz.
Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta.
www.calathea.ar
experimenta@calathea.ar

The pandemic atmosphere is palpable, with the mask covering the mouth as a stumbling block and a new variant of the virus as a shadow in the air.

And in this being able/not being able to go out with peace of mind, Noiscapes, Franco Falistoco’s first work and the first reference of his nascent label, Bolinga Everest, appears as a double invitation: to travel without leaving home or, indeed, to go for a ride with his sonic company in tow.

It is striking, coming as it does from the other side of the Andes (Rosario-ARG, to be precise), that the first voices we hear are Chilean, apparently from street musicians devoted to that hard rock of the late 60s and early 70s that is still alive in the hearts and players of various streaming platforms and even open radio stations, such as our local Futuro (which, with that name, embodies a great paradox).

Listening to this series of soundscapes —or noisescapes, as Franco playfully calls them— can be done in a continuous or a piecemeal way without major inconveniences. If we opt for the former, we accompany him on a walk through Viña del Mar, moving from the sound generated by humans to the expression of the water and the beach. After a while, hard rock returns, refusing to die, like the composer Edgar Varese and, later, Frank Zappa.

Then we move from the sea to the park, with the music reappearing, this time acoustic and with a different frame, covered by voices, motors and birds, intertwining and maintaining the expressive sonorous pulse. After a while, we lose sight of details and sources: the motorised vehicles and ambient noise change into colours and timbres; the silhouettes and contours dissolve, becoming paintings or animations, if that’s how we want to conceive them. Or rhythms, if we prefer this experimental perspective or disposition.

Such synaesthesia can provoke our sensorium in a very similar way to some of ASMR’s videos, which are presented in an increasingly better audiovisual and thematically more formulaic way. Now we leave the park to return to the water, with a different rhythm and environment: there is also music, human voices and birds that make themselves heard without much inconvenience, which makes me think of the effort that the latter have had to make to distinguish themselves in the city.

Thus, the 30 minutes of NOISCAPES fly by. Just like the extension he proposed to me for this review. “With 30 lines I am the happiest man in the world,” was the invitation. I hope I have followed his example. And may brevity be an impulse to return to the source, to be happy, again and again.

Gerardo Figueroa Rodríguez.
Maipú, Santiago de Chile, end 2021, beginning 2022.

CREDITOS:

Integral Production: Franco Falistoco.
Tape Edition: Bolinga Everest (bolingaeverestrecords.bandcamp.com)
Original Cover Design: Pablo Picco.
Text: Gerardo Figueroa Rodríguez.
Digital Edition: CALATHEA Experimenta.
Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta.
www.calathea.ar
experimenta@calathea.ar

Hippasus of Metapontus was a pre-Socratic philosopher who is credited with the construction of the dodecahedron as an approximation to a sphere and with the discovery of incommensurability, which in the philosophy of science is the impossibility of comparing two theories when there is no common theoretical language. If two theories are incommensurable then there is no way to compare them and say which one is correct. In mathematics it is not the impossibility of comparison, but the absence of a common factor that can express it.

Apparently, Hippasus unveiled secrets that should not be revealed “to those who were not worthy to partake of such knowledge” according to the Acousmatists, (The Acousmatists were the custodians of Pythagoras’ teachings and their main concern was that they should be preserved as Pythagoras had handed them down).

Hippasus disregarded the warnings of the Acusmatics and said the wrong things to the wrong people. The result was his expulsion from the community and his subsequent death… Some sources cite that he died by drowning, others that he committed suicide or that Pythagoras killed him. It is not known for certain how he died, what is known is that the Pythagoreans themselves raised a tomb making it clear that, for them, he was already dead.

Here is a small tribute to a philosopher of whom little is said and who spoke out at the most inopportune moments.

If something Hippasus left us, honestly, it was not the discovery of the dodecahedron or incommensurability, it is that bitter taste we have when we read history, it is the certainty that Pythagoras was surely very wrong and that most of our beliefs are based on those mistakes. We know little or nothing of the many Hippos who must have existed and who surely had a tomb named after him before his death.

From this corner of the world, in this age of repeated misunderstandings and insurmountable blindness, I propose two different versions of his own death to Hippiasus of Metapontum so that he may finally rest in peace.

Thank you Hippasus for discovering the incommensurability of things. Without it we would not have the capacity to know that another world is possible just because not everything is measurable and quantifiable.

Sol Rezza — 2009

Credits:

This work, which joins the CALATHEA Experimenta catalogue, has been remastered from its original wav file.

First published in 2009, contained in several repositories under CC-CL licenses and always distributed in lossy audio formats.

For the first time it is released in high quality digital format. The mastering process was assisted by the composer herself.
Mastering for platforms by CALATHEA Experimenta.

Dedicated to the archive.org project because everything we do once done ceases to belong to us, time knows no copyrights.

“Shorts for RADIO” is an experimental radio series that lasts approximately 12 minutes. It is the result of a research based on sound archives dating from the 20’s to the 60’s, from different parts of the world that can be found in archive.org under the public domain.

“Shorts for RADIO” was born at the end of 2011 with the idea of creating a small virtual radio fragment, a piece of experimental radio that collects sound particles and texts that at some point have been transmitted through a media such as radio or television. From these sound fragments, I tried to recreate a new discourse, a play on words, a transformation of language, a wink between sound composition and radio style, an ethereal sigh in a convulsed virtual world where radio mutates and languages and meanings take on different meanings.

Radio is a medium that takes the form of what it represents, a voice, a sound behind a black curtain, solitude in the middle of the night, a gaze without eyes. Something that is beyond our reach, but that is there. Something we understand beyond the language of words, a language that extends, through sounds.

Recommended listening at night, with headphones.

Year: 2012
Produced by: Sol Rezza 

Créditos:

Original Cover Design: Daniel Iván.
Re-design: CALATHEA Experimenta.
—-
Re-Release 2012-2023.
Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta.

Paradox: Made from soundscapes of a lawnmower, a barking dog, sounds of lakes, piers and rivers in different locations.
All of them modified through a computer DAW with virtual instruments without MIDI connection.

Aerangis Confusa: Made from the soundscape of lakes and piers, modified through a computer DAW.

Revolution as a Loop: Related to the soundscape of lakes and storms. Modified through a computer DAW with virtual instruments without MIDI connection.

The Cat: Made from soundscapes of crickets, lakes, storms and wharfs. Modified through a computer DAW with virtual instruments without MIDI connection.

Putting the parts together results in a final piece with a duration of 47 minutes.
It is recommended to listen to it as a journey: with headphones if possible, and in a comfortable place, with the lighting you like the most.

Sol Rezza
12 August 2011.

Features of the Edition

SPIT: Paradox of Aerangis, the first and second parts, merged into one name.

SPIT: Revolution as a Cat, is the third and fourth parts, merged into a single name.

SPIT, which becomes part of the CALATHEA Experimenta catalogue, has been remastered from its original wav file.

Credits:

This work, which joins the CALATHEA Experimenta catalogue, has been remastered from its original wav file.

First released in 2011 by the label ACUSTRONICA, contained in various repositories under CC-CL licenses and always distributed in lossy audio formats.

For the first time it is released in high quality digital format.
The mastering process was assisted by the composer herself.
Mastering for platforms by CALATHEA Experimenta.

Each one of them approaches each other by means of the same tone that moves them and makes them whisper their truth, their urgent, slow, unstoppable reflection.

In turn, “Triptych” is a tribute that was born out of the most heartbreaking days of my life. It was music that I made (that I had to make) when music no longer made sense to me.

When it all blew up.

These compositions were about facing the splinters, stopping at them, without knowing why, without a choice. I’m not sure if I’ve ever believed in making music again, I know, and I’m amazed to notice, that I’m still making music. I know, and with astonishment I notice, that I am still making music. Perhaps the reasons are not my own to understand.

“Triptych” is and will always be for me a huge, beloved wound.

CREDITOS:

Composition, interpretation and editing: Lorenzo Gomez Oviedo.
Production: CALATHEA Experimenta & ADAPTADOR Records.
Mastered by: Franco Falistoco.

Final Mastering: CALATHEA Experimenta

What is a Hörspiel?
What sounds characterise it: natural sounds, sounds of places, everyday sounds, familiar sounds?

And finally:
How can the piano be used as a counterpoint?
The piano, not only through the music produced by the instrument,
but as a presence,
as identification?

The absence of voice in the foreground, or its presence, close to the domestic activity, and remote in the landscapes, restores an imaginary world, which is that of my memory and of my dreams.

The idea of the piece, then, is to confront two sound worlds, the radio-like sounds (indoor and outdoor soundscapes) and the sounds of the piano, which intervene in and out of situation.

While an underlying story can be intuited, the magic of the montage opens the floodgates of the imagination, allowing for a multiplicity of possible readings from the most anecdotal to the most abstract.

Credits:

Andrea Cohen: Composition, Interpretation.
Grafía: Katell Herbert.

Mastering for platforms by CALATHEA Experimenta.

The oldest is Radio No Man’s Land. Commissioned by Kunstradio-Radiokunst, it was performed live in 2009 in an ORF studio in Vienna, on the occasion of the plenary meeting of the EBU’s Ars Acustica group, with the presence of its members in the audience. It was a tribute to the 20th anniversary of the creation of this group, dedicated to the promotion, production and dissemination of sound art and, in particular, of radio art. But as a radio work, it also used the medium’s own resource, the interview: throughout the interview, we incorporated comments from some of the outstanding members of Ars Acustica about the group.

On the other hand, our work behaved like a glass building that reflects those around it, as it linked and mixed, in a clear exercise of appropriationism, all kinds of radio art productions, many of which arose within the group or were produced or even composed by some of its members. And in some cases going as far as self-reference, by incorporating fragments of our own works. That general plan was punctuated or, if you like, interfered with, by other sounds from our intermediate installation Terre di Nessuno, made for the Fundación Telefónica in Madrid in 2002. And if parcheesi was the game space there —to which we applied impossible to follow and certainly bizarre rules— both works and isolated sounds arose in part from the movement of pieces on a virtual parcheesi board displayed on a large screen. And the aforementioned rules sounded from time to time in the total discourse. From a second computer, fragments of other radio plays and various sounds were launched, and the total mix for the radio was made live.

The space alluded to here was, as already mentioned, that of the game of Parcheesi. But the content and the works that made it up belonged to the electronic space of the radio.

The second of the works, Tierras de Nadie: Cartografía Sonora, was composed in 2012, commissioned by the Espacio de Experimentación Sonora (EES) of the MUAC in Mexico. The original work was therefore designed to be broadcast on 22 loudspeakers plus two subwoofers, with which the space was equipped. From these materials, in 2013, in a studio of the ORF in Vienna, we produced a 5.1 reduction of these materials and a stereophonic work, both produced by Kunstradio.

Physical space is the protagonist here, as in its different episodes we enter a prison, a mine, stroll through invented gardens or are dragged along by the noises and slogans of a street meta-demonstration. Joining the five sequences that make up the piece, we listen to a runner who goes through —and with this, measuring— this acoustic space in which the work is inscribed. It is also an element taken from the installation Terre di Nessuno, which also corresponds to the iconography of the Pulcinella that moves through the squares of a stylised parcheesi board, as presented in various visual elements of that installation. As for the sequences, the incorporation of electronic treatments on some sounds or the inclusion of others that are out of context —and, for this very reason, interfere with and problematise the easy reception of the whole— leads us to a No-Man’s Land mapped with the help of sound: hence the title of the piece.

In this case, we stick to our definition of no-man’s-lands as spaces of disorientation and deregulation, which, as can be seen, was also applicable to the meaning of the rules of the game of Parcheesi incorporated into the previous work.

Credits:

Radio No Man’s Land
Edited version of the original recording of the radio performance held in May 2009 at the ORF Funkhaus in Vienna.
Commissioning and production: Kunstradio-Radiokunst
Performers: Concha Jerez, José Iges, voice, laptops.
Computer technician: Pedro López
Editing & mixing: ORF & authors.
Duration: 31’49”

Tierras de nadie: Cartografía Sonora
Commissioning by EES del MUAC, Ciudad de México, 2012
Stereo mix realised at the ORF Funkhaus Vienna in 2013.
Sound engineer: Martin Leitner
Original recordings: Concha Jerez, José Iges.
Stereo Mix: José Iges
Duration: 15’06”

Mastering for platforms by CALATHEA Experimenta.