Constellations

“It was my wish to fuse both my passions and professions, radio and

composition into one composition. ‘iota mikro’ is Greek for small iota.

Iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and ‘mikro’ just means

small but could also refer to a microphone. And since my real paper birth

certificate in Rwanda is actually missing, I created, with iota mikro, my

own sonic birth certificate.”

“In this piece, I was thinking about how things right in front of you can

tell you stuff that for whatever reason you may be oblivious to.  You may

be distracted by other things or… you can’t or you don’t pay attention.

That’s what it’s all about, paying attention.”

“I made part of this piece two years ago, kind of as an experiment or a

sketch. I recorded myself making sounds in the kitchen, so I made eggs - I

turned on the stove, I cracked open the eggs, I fried em up. At the time I

was also reading this piece by Zadie Smith, which had an audio component of

her reading the piece, and I just needed sound materials and liked her

voice and cadences, so I thought it would be interesting to cut her voice

up and manipulate it and decontextualize it and see if I could relate it to

the kitchen and the idea of cooking as a metaphor for something else,

something beyond the piece.”

“I really just want to know what love is, and why it treats me so poorly

sometimes. Even though this is far less detailed in its autobiographical

elements than some other work I've done and put out into the world, it is

by far my most vulnerable piece. I translated this short soliloquy from

Faust in November of 2017, with the primary goal of perverting academia.

But, while putting a lot of conscious effort into the play of translation,

I ended up putting a lot of myself into it. A lot has changed since then,

but I do struggle with the same old problems, and I wanted this piece to

reflect accurately on many different stages of love.”

When we first heard this piece, it was at an earlier stage in its

development, at a gathering with a group of Toronto audio aficionados. We

both were moved by rawness of the tape. This sort of vulnerable

conversation about masculinity was something we'd rarely, if ever, heard

before. We love the piece's intimacy, not only in the words spoken but also

in its style - the stereo recording, the feeling of being able to drift

alongside its narrators as they walk the shoreline. Black Beach is Chris'

first foray into audio, and we're so glad to be able to share it here on

Constellations.

Kaija's immersive piece is chock-full of sensual field recordings,

including to our delight "some recordings of me playing piano downstairs in

my old house through a hydrophone in the bathtub". Listening to this piece

feels like we're following the fisherman's current into a suspension

between light and shadow, propelled by bold transitions and a sensitivity

to the musicality of voice.

Even if you don't understand Spanish, this piece is an evocative,

multi-lingual sci-fi adventure. Masterfully produced, its assemblage of

voices, samples, sound design, complex musical beds and sound effects wind

it up into a delicious ear candy collage that leaves listeners reeling and

dreaming.  We haven't heard any sound-art fiction like this before.

This complex manifesto of a piece is powerful both in its content and

delivery. Noam's written testimony is powerful, but set against the

rhythmic collage of percussion, sampling, and field recordings, its

descriptions are rendered more raw and graphic. Meira's work is politically

relevant as ever, and we're inspired by the bold and heartfelt stand she

makes in all her work.

That this piece was born from a beautiful love story is evident in the

intricate and intimate texture of the sounds. The pulsating soundscape

traverses mood and plays with space in its reverberations. Who knew that

symphonic wildness of bird sounds set against a gentle music box would be

such a striking juxtaposition.

We love the closeness, vulnerability, and musicality of this piece. TK has

taken morning drowsiness, that floating time between conscious and

unconscious, and massaged it into a tender swirl of thoughts, hums, and

dreams.