hors temps

may 06, 2006.

[ quicknav-: jam karet | roam is my home ]

On tuesday evening may 02th Cosmodrone did the 13th (or was it the 14th ? ... maybe the 13th and the 14th ?) Hors d'Oeuvres, a once-a-month series of dinner concerts (veritable 'Tafelmuziek') in the restaurant of Mains d'Oeuvres in Saint Ouen. Now including M d'O-resident Etienne Jaumet, we were five for the occasion.
Here are some colorful visual extracts ... :

Cosmodrone events can not be but ... curious. We set up our synths and stuff, tested some here and some there, and then slowly drifted into a playing that for some three hours just went on and on and on ... volume was low, tempo was slow ... hors temps, more than hors d'oeuvres ... some people were watching and listening ; others were eating and chatting ; some doing both ... I recorded the first 75 minutes. Curious event, curious recording.

Cosmodrone will be again at the very same Mains d'Oeuvres on sunday may 7th (as part of this year's Sonic Protest festival), with Orguanisation, an installation __ in which a dozen or so old electronic (transistor) organs will be placed along the walls of the exposition hall. They will sound through their own built-in amp & loudspeakers only and be used as they are (including all possible defects, and without attempt to fine tune them). Over a period of approximately 4 hours ... very slowly ... Cosmodrone musicians will, organ by organ, and note for note, install C major chords in all available octaves; with the help of pieces of cardboard, plastic or wood to hold down the keys. The organs will sing this 'triad' for a while, until - again very slowly - all available E flat's will be added; and then, somewhat later all E's are 'released', leading - again very slowly - up to a sounding of a C minor triad in all octaves on each one of the organs ... ( * )

From C major to C minor ... very slowly ...
But that is ... jam karet ... !

[ added october 13th 2007 : Below there's a YouTube video made by Rébus, which as its soundtrack uses a ten minute cut-up of the hours long recording of Orguanisation, live during Sonic Protest, at Mains d'Oeuvres. We also recorded a 5 minute 'compact version' of the piece, at Flex's place in Montreuil. That recording appeared as one of tracks on the 2006 Sonic Protest CD ... ]

[ quicknav-: hors temps | roam is my home ]

jam karet ?

...

Jam karet is indonesian ... 'Jam' means time, and 'karet' means rubber ... rubber time ... It's a concept reflecting a very un-western attitude towards 'time' and its 'gestion'. The idea that 'time is elastic' ... things happen when they happen, it all just takes the time it takes.

The Cosmodrone Hors d'Oeuvres performance felt very jam karet, and the Orguanisation installation at the Sonic Protest festival, that's very jam karet as well.

Coincidence, or not, but also the current, eight, edition of Raudio focuses on this notion of 'elastic time', presenting as it does - in the midst of a varied selection of other tracks - a collection of time stretched fragments of ookoi recordings. Stretched the way Leif Inge stretched Beethovens ninth symphony ... with different 'factors' ... as part of a (loose) 'investigation' into the jam karet potential of music and sounds. For certain things 'stretch better' than others, certain sounds and (fragments of) music appear to be - to a certain degree - 'elastic' ... and others are not.

The launch of Raudio #08, baptized 'Roam Stroam', coincides with the 'Roam is my Home' project of graphic designer Max Kisman ( ** ) at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (the Netherlands). As ookoi we will do a headphone streaming concert there, on sunday may 7th, from 11h to 17h. [Those that would want to tune in: check the soundblog or raudio site during the time of the concert for the streaming link ...] As part of the concert we will do several attempts to play jam karet. By this we mean the playing of passages - with a duration of say 4, 5 minutes - with the explicit intention to afterwards time stretch the recording ...
[ added may 17th 2006 : For an impression of what went on that sunday at the Centraal Museum, you may want to listen to 'Is Roam My Home ? ... Is this a Raudio Podcast ?', the 22nd of our Raudio Podcasts ... ( *** ) ]
Our performance at the Centraal Museum will also be marked by us premiering the brand new ookoi tails: stage overalls, craft fully designed and handmade especially for ookoi by Bernadette Corstens and Mieke Dietvorst ....

[[ added december 2006: Based upon original footage shot by Ate M. Hes, here's Skazanks's vlog version of the 'Roam is my Home' Podcast, as found at YouTube's ...

notes __ ::
(*) In january (if I remember rightly) we recorded a five minute version of Orguanisation using three 'clippers' and my 'bontempi'. That recording is part of the tracks on the Sonic Protest 2006 compilation CD, for sale at the concerts and free with a festival pass ... What struck me (and the others) most when we were mastering the track and listening back to it, was that it seemed to be impossible to hear the magor-minor transition, even over the course of but five minutes; the difference is evident, when you skip from the beginning to the end of the file ... but the changes over time are so gradual that I didn't hear anything changing, and I at first thought we had made a mistake while recording or were listening to the wrong file ... I guess an important factor in this 'camouflage' must be the fact that the organs we used are all slightly out of tune, hence rather than pure 'major/minor' chords what we get is an evolving microtonal cluster, that starts centered around 'major' and then gradually shifts to a 'minor' heart ... I'd be interesting to hear others reactions and opinions ... maybe this is an 'effect' that is well known ? [ ^ ]

(**) Max Kisman did the coverlino for our Muziektafel/Tafelmuziek (2004) CD, copies of which, if you allow me to remind you, are still available at our concerts, in several shops, or by mail order ...(recent CD review in SonHors [in french] ...) [ ^ ]

(***) To subscribe to the Raudio Podcasts, get the feed's URI by clicking the green podcast button in the sidebar. Alternatively, you may preview the podcast feed, or simply download the mp3-file (10.6 Mb) ... [ ^ ]

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