Maile Colbert has compiled an article on certain aspects of field recording - available here
featuring interviews with JrF, Rui Costa, Catherine Clover, Andrea Williams, Hildegard Westerkamp etc
Monday, May 23, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
egcd037
limited edition taiyo yuden full size on deluxe, recycled stock art card - first 20 copies come as 2 x 8cm cd (please state when ordering whether you would prefer a standard cd edition or the 2 x 8cm edition)
gathering together four of Jez's most requested & intriguing pieces for single objects
broken piezo disc
teasel plant
slate window sill
flask
| price options |
review from The Field Reporter blog:
Jez riley French’s Four Objects is an exploration into the amplification of sound miniatures. Over the course of forty minutes French directs his microphones towards four different objects, including: a piezo disc microphone, a teasel plant, a slate window, a tea flask. These pieces are strategically presented without any compositional intent, each of them being unmodified field recordings. As stated on his website French questions the use of processed sound, concerned that it is removing our ability to listen. Four Objects can therefore be read as an exercise in listening, a form of anti-composition which challenges the audience to become fully immersed within its microscopic worlds.
When French isn’t releasing his own material he is well-known for creating microphones. Four Objects showcases them well. The first track, a piezo disc slowly breaking, captures the tiny crackles and pops of a microphone in its death throes. For ten minutes we listen to the various sounds associated with this process. As with the ensuing recordings the piezo disc is presented without any external ambience. In light of French’s raison d’être this sole focus upon a single object enables the audience to be absorbed into its sonic realm without any other distraction.
A teasel plant on a windy day takes us to the surface of this prickly plant as it sways in the wind. A contact microphone amplifies the plant’s fast irregular rattles, each with its own pitch and wooden resonance. Listening to the recording we are drawn into the plant as it moves from side to side.
A slate windowsill captures a low drone-like vibration emanating from the surface of a sill. While the other tracks feature variously recognisable tonalities and slight moments of silence a slate windowsillhas a relentless propulsion that is at once mesmeric and disturbing.
A flask at q-02 is the final track in the release. Here French presents the sound of hot air as it slowly escapes from a tea-flask. The track’s placement at the end of the release seems critical, reminding us that a world of sound lies before us in the most mundane of objects.
French’s Four Objects is as much a celebration of sound as it is about the act of listening. The duration of the tracks requires the audience to listen beyond the limits of their usual attention span. It also obliges the audience to forego the anticipation of listening for climactic sound-events. Instead French invites us to lose ourselves within the moment of listening and to recognise that music naturally exists around us.
from review on the watchful ear site by Richard Pinnell:
Jez releases a lot of CDs, many by other musicians, but also a good few by himself. I still haven’t had the time to catch up with his album released by the Compost and Height netlabel yet. Its here if you would like to sample some of his music in lossless format for free. I have come to think of Jez as something of a hunter/gatherer of field recordings, (though I’m not entirely sure that the description field recording these days really describes suitably what he and other like him actually do). Jez then releases albums of material that seem a bit like documentation of his explorations, audio photo albums maybe, an apt metaphor given Jez’ considerable skills as a photographer....
....they seem to work as little catalogues of recordings that can present some fascinating sounds, discovered in places we might not expect....little moments of aural revelation....
So Four Objects contains four recordings, each exactly ten minutes in length. As you might expect, the four tracks are focussed on recordings of four objects- a piezo disc microphone slowly breaking, a teasel plant found on the Norfolk coast, a slate window sill in Brussells and a hot drinks flask in the same city, which apparently started making the sounds heard here ten minute sand twenty-eight seconds after being filled with hot water.
The first, the sounds of the piezo disc’s last moments consists of a stream of tiny, tinkling, crackling pops and clicks, about as we might expect. What makes the recording nice is the absence of anything else, so the tiny sounds as they flit past sit against a backdrop of white. Apparently the disc was moved slightly to create these little crackles, and so there is some human input into the generation of the sounds. This piece then, sets the mood for the album in general- nice sounds, found by an attentive ear, captured and presented well....
The second track, the recording of the teasel plant reminds me a lot of the extensive listening I have done int he past to Jeph Jerman’s field recordings of cactii. The plant has a brittle, almost hollow sound to it, so the recording we hear has a strong percussive feel. The wind blows the plant, which makes it knock into itself, so creating this contact mic'ed recording. Again, its a nice capture.
The third piece, the recording of the window sill is another contact mic piece, but here the sounds of vibrations on the slate surface take on a strange, alien quality, almost (for some reason) like standing in a long concrete tunnel listening to the sound of dense church bells ringing at the far end of it. Again, it takes a knowledgeable and creative ear to discover this kind of thing, and Jez is remarkably good at finding hidden beauty in unexpected places, a theme that runs through much of his work, audio and visual.
The hot drinks flask is an intriguing one. The statement that the sounds we hear, a sudden explosion of escaping air, occurred at 10′28″ after the flask was filled suggests that this was no accident, and the careful placement of microphones to capture this phenomena also suggests that Jez was expecting this to happen, perhaps having come across it by accident before. What we hear then is an initial rush of sound that slowly breaks up into little stuttering jabs of sound, not at all unlike the sound of raw open circuit electronics we often hear in modern improvisation. I’d never have guessed that a flask was creating the sound, so again the element of revealing hidden treasure is the track’s strong point....
So Four Objects is not at all without its merits....it certainly showcases the remarkable ability of Jez riley French to discover and then reveal to the rest of us a soundworld beyond what we normally perceive.....Four Objects then is a collection of nice, creative recordings....
Thursday, March 17, 2011
as part of the Ear Room series on Sound & Music you can find an interview with myself by clicking here
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
NEW RELEASE in the 'instamatic' series....
Jez riley French - instamatic # 8 - portugal (mp3 extract) by JezrileyFrench
Jez riley French - instamatic # 8 - portugal (mp3 extract) by JezrileyFrench
Monday, February 21, 2011
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Jez riley French . between gestures . glasgow
live and field recordings
one . between kinetics (live sections from performance at sharmanka)
two . spaces between others (between scores, concert room at wandelweiser event)
three . between window and table (live sections from performance at 12 / 2)
four . between still morning and a long picnic (recording of room at 12 / 2)
five . between agedashi tofu, udon and central (recordings in restaurant and station)
Jez riley French - field recordings, zither, salt, glass lenses, lx-1 camera, paper, contact microphones, table, fingers, shells
p&c 2011
engraved glass eg-sr02
42.25 mins
free download
(loseless wav audio file + pdf)
engraved glass / compost & height
to visit the download page click the link below
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Festival Paivascapes #1 com programa fechado
Paivascapes #1 – River Paiva Sound Festival, a five-day celebration dedicated to the exploration of riverside landscapes and communities through sound and multimedia art, which is produced by Portuguese sound art organization Binaural/Nodar, has its program complete.
During Paivascapes #1 festival, to happen between March 4th to March 8th, 2011, twenty five artists will have their works shown or performed and six key speakers will participate in a series of conferences on creativity, rurality and environment.
List of participant artists:
Alicja Rogalska (PL), Anna Hints (EE), Charles Stankievech (CA), Craig Dongoski (US), Ignaz Schick (DE), Jez riley French (GB), John Grzinich (US), Katherine Liberovskaya (CA), Lasse-Marc Riek (DE), Luis Costa (PT), Maile Colbert (US), Manuela Barile (IT), Marc Behrens (DE), Marja-Liisa Plats (EE), Martin Clarke (GB), Masayo Kajimura (DE), o.blaat (JP), Patrick McGinley (US), Phill Niblock (US), Rui Costa (PT), Rui Silveira (PT), Sérgio Cruz (PT), Tiago Carvalho (PT), William Lamson (US), Yasuno Miyauchi (JP).
List of key speakers:
Tiago Monteiro-Henriques (PT), Sérgio Caetano (PT), Marcos Medalon (PT), Nuno Martins (PT), Domingos Cruz (PT), Tiago Carvalho (PT).
Monday, January 3, 2011
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
'sonata for clarinet & nodar'
Jez riley French (field recording / composition)
Joana Silva (clarinet)
Luis Costa (field recording)
egcd035 / nodar002
(a joint release between engraved glass & edições nodar)
in the last days of my residency at binaural (Nodar, Portugal) an idea came from a series of chance occurrences. Luis spotted Joana in the village & knew she was a clarinet player & that she had come from Lisbon to visit family for the summer. In the days before, myself & Luis had talked about recordings of instruments & singers in the natural environment - the roots of field recording. A decision was made to ask Joana if she would be willing to play her clarinet whilst walking slowly along a path that swept around the curve in the Paiva river that runs through Nodar. Joana, still at school, still learning the instrument, agreed & a day was arranged.
I think it's fair to say that what took place was truly a unique moment. This was not a 'perfect' realisation of a score that had been rehearsed. This was not a seasoned performer with a vast experience of contemporary composition playing a piece they knew well. Instead what was captured was a young player truly exploring the idea for the piece. There was no detailed instruction to her in regards to overall duration or the space between the played sections. This, therefore, is a composition of a moment.
Of course, the very nature of field recording & one of it's charms, is that it is a gesture to capture an unpredictable environment. Given the rural nature of Nodar village some aspects of everyday village life were bound to make an appearance. It was another chance occurrence that at the time we were recording someone decided it was time to trim the overgrowth on their plot of land with one of the loudest machines invented for the purpose. As this sound went on & on my thoughts went from frustration to resignation - we were, after all, capturing an aspect of life as it was happening. In composing the final piece it would have been possible to leave this intervention of modern rural reality out. However doing so would have also removed a memorable part of the experience.
It is the emotive capture of this day, this moment that motivated the composition drawn from the recordings made that day & the decision to create this release.
my thanks to Joana for her openess, exploration & dedication to the essential qualities of the music (both performed & environmental) & to Luis & all at Binaural for their hospitality & commitment.
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