By the end of the 80s I produced my first vinyl
release, “Freebasing A For Is Me”. An album completely free
of any preconception, built as an abstract expressionist soundsculpture.
Most of the releases after Freebasing have been based on certain material
or a working method or structural principles.
Sometimes because I needed to contain myself within certain boundaries
but most times because I had a certain subject of research in mind (like
mono/stereo, or white noise, or the abstraction of human speech).
With this collection of compositions I return to the emptiness of “Freebasing”.
Every composition is just what it is. There are no thoughts other than
their sonic relations within the construction. I travel from a hospital
ward directly into the intestines of a harmonium. From a street with cafés
into a busy railroad, into a lighter into, … et cetera. After the
endless process
of zooming in and out to get every sound in place I gave a lot of time
to the production of this disc. New software (Reaper) has given me better
and more precise tools for getting the exact sound that I wanted.
About the track titles. I have always been intrigued by language, words
and meaning. Several of my seminal works are based on the human voice
and on language. Tom Phillips is a British artist working a lot with letters,
words and typography. One work particularly intrigued me. During the 70s
Mr. Phillips worked on a book in which he reworked existing pages of books.
By painting or drawing over the text he erased most of it but left certain
word combinations intact. That way “poems” were created. While
composing these constructions I learned about Mr. Phillips‘s work
and felt a connection. I too cut parts out of a large “page”.
That part of a much longer recording is set into a new context but still
conveys the meaning it had inside the original context. That’s how
I came to choose the text bits of one of these “humuments” (No.
6 from the 1st edition) and use them as the titles for the tracks.
Jos Smolders
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