There’s music by Irish composer Emma O’Halloran, London producer Rival Consoles, and American composer Paul Lansky, all built around the sounds of bits of voice, assembled in interesting and unexpected ways.
Irish composer and vocalist Emma O’Halloran, in her work, “Constellations,” takes processed and chopped vocal sounds and weaves them together with a live vocalist and chamber ensemble. The work won National Sawdust’s inaugural Hildegard competition in 2018.
Then, there’s music from the series of “Idle Chatter” works by American electro-acoustic composer Paul Lansky, where tiny fragments of human speech were arranged into melodies, chords, and rhythms. Inspired by the composer's exposure to rap in the 1980's, the work was made by feeding the sounds of human speech into a computer - an IBM mainframe that took up an entire room.
Listen to work by UK Producer Ryan Le West, who records as Rival Consoles. On his soundscape for a dance, Overflow, he also uses a “chopped up and reconstituted vocal thing” (John Schaefer) of tiny vocal samples. Plus, hear one of American composer Carl Stone’s sample-based compositions. - Caryn Havlik
Program #4581, Musical Megabytes (First Aired 1/13/2022)
ARTIST: Paul Lansky
WORK: Idle Chatter [9:25]
RECORDING: More Than Idle Chatter
SOURCE: Bridge Records #9050
INFO: bridgerecords.com
ARTIST: Madeline Healey, Soprano; The Refugee Orchestra Project; Lidiya Yankovskaya, Conductor
WORK: Emma O'Halloran: Constellations [9:18]
RECORDING: Hildegard Winners, Vol. 1
SOURCE: National Sawdust
INFO: nationalsawdust.bandcamp.com
ARTIST: Paul Lansky
WORK: Not Just More Idle Chatter [8:05]
RECORDING: More Than Idle Chatter
SOURCE: Bridge Records #9050
INFO: bridgerecords.com
ARTIST: Carl Stone
WORK: Flint's [9:28]
RECORDING: Al-Noor
SOURCE: In Tone Music
INFO: Try Amazon.com, Youtube Music, Spotify
ARTIST: Rival Consoles
WORK: Overflow [5:37]
RECORDING: Overflow
SOURCE: Erased Tapes 147
INFO: erasedtapes.com
ARTIST: Paul Lansky
WORK: Just More Idle Chatter [7:20]
RECORDING: More Than Idle Chatter
SOURCE: Bridge Records #9050
INFO: bridgerecords.com
