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sample: Piano
Phase: [with
Real Audio]'Black Immure: {Music from the Casa de Serralves in 12 phases}' CD
Janek Schaefer
Sirr.ecords [SIRR 2010] Buy
Here!
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sample: Piano
Phase: [with
Real Audio]
Track Listing:
One improvised composition [12 divisions]
Running time: One Hour
Released Jan 2003
Twilight Concert
Casa de Serralves, Porto, Portugal
29th June 2002
For this recording, I spent 3 days collecting, manipulating and editing sounds
found in and around the Casa de Serralves and the Museu de Arte Contemporanea
Serralves. The Casa is located in the museums landscaped gardens and had a superb
natural reverb.
For the concert this material was performed and combined with locally purchased
‘Portuguese’ vinyl and recordings made using their Steinway piano.
During the performance I physically 'played' the building by slowly winding
down the enormous shutters and windows to envelop the audience in darkness.
‘Immure’ means to enclose within walls, to incarcerate. Towards the
end of the concert I opened the terrace shutters and doors behind me as a sound
reactive light installation cast shadows and light into the interior. I ended
by running out into the moonlit garden away from the villa and audience as the
final sounds flickered and faded away leaving them in silence, alone.
Commissioned by Pedro Rocha at the Serralves Foundation
Recorded using room microphones and line mix.
Edited and Mastered at the audiOh! Room, London.
Photography captured by Janek in Porto and Havana.
Cover design by M. Behrens with J. Schaefer
Many thanks to everyone at the Serralves Foundation and Sirr.ecords.
Dedicated to Dr. Mary Malecka
[p] sirr.ecords 2002 www.sirr-ecords.com
[c] Janek Schaefer 2002 www.audiOh.com
Geometric Bulletin
>
A remarkable example that researches the relation between sound and architecture
Jorge Castro, (Puerto Rico)
>
Just got my copy this past week. My god, this album rocks! Every new
record I hear from you I like even more!
Very inspiring.
VITAL list, (Staalplaat) [TJ Norris]
>
The latest on Portugese label, Sirr.ecords
is Janek's Schaefer's phonographic swan song. This live recording begs to be
played in the dark with its dramatic edges, dips and sparse dusty corners. If
you threw this disc into the ocean it would most definitely float to the surface
of the currents. It floats with an eerie determination. Experiments with piano
and other foreign sound samples, there seems to be a wealth of gadgetry tossed
about subtly herein. At times a ghostly heirloom soundtrack to faded familial
memories, contorted by time, driven by the urgency of discovery to dig past
the surface. There is perhaps a parade that's gone by, in its wake having left
a chronicle of its pomp and circumstance. We are only allowed to experience
through another's memory. This recording could easily be illustrated by the
visual works of Christian Boltanski, in its quiet moments only the echoes of
structure have been faintly illuminated. The mysterious and effective black
and white cover design was created by M. Behrens depicting imagery [photographed
by Janek] from the performance site [and Cuba] with a digitized background.
Schaefer builds a narrative for a world gone mad by salvaging its bare remnants.
Stylus Magazine, (UK) [Ed Howard]
>
Subtly
shifting colors over extended sequences, caked in a glacial freeze that thaws
with hard cracks and pops within the ice floes, turntablist Janek Schaefer's
latest album Black Immure is a work that requires intense concentration to appreciate
its many intricate pleasures. The album is a live recording of a piece composed
specifically for the old mansion in which it was performed, and the Portuguese
casa's reverb-laden atmosphere surrounds this music like a dampening fog, enclosing
on all sides. The music inspires claustrophobia, inviting images of darkened
corridors and nighttime gardens draped with moonlit mist. There is a skewed
Romanticism to Schaefer's drones and hiss, a nostalgia that seems embedded into
the persona of the vinyl deconstructionist despite the modern methods of Schaefer
and his many kindred souls.
This Romantic spirit is the beating heart and driving force behind Black Immure,
an hour-long continuous work divided almost arbitrarily into 12 movements for
the CD release. Schaefer's primary tool is, as ever, his custom-designed turntable,
here playing records he found in a Portuguese shop before the concert. But this
prerecorded musical element rarely ever enters too prominently into the proceedings.
Even more so than his closest counterpart, Philip Jeck, Schaefer is unconcerned
with the actual music encoded onto the vinyl he collects. These records are
sound sources for him, raw materials to be tweaked and manipulated until they
conform to the essential function of the piece at hand. For Black Immure, Schaefer
has crafted a subtle, dense sea of sound, with staticky waves churning over
distant classical strings or charmingly upbeat melodies.
The turntablist also incorporates field recordings he made of the old casaÆs
piano, which add an eerie sense of place and time to the proceedings. The sixth
track, which features SchaeferÆs plaintive, minimalist piano reverberating beneath
a pristine surface of drones and distant rhythmic clattering, is one of the
best here, achieving a delicacy and emotional resonance not heard quite as effectively
on the rest of the album. Which is not to say that the rest isnÆt excellent,
too. The first five tracks build logically towards this halfway mark, ebbing
and flowing from calm stasis to chaotic outbursts and back again with a deceptive
ease. After the sixth trackÆs moment of transcendence, the music slowly winds
back into itself, swallowing choirs and pianos whole into the near-silence of
a primeval heartbeat or the slow lapping of a wave upon the shoreline. SchaeferÆs
quietude never works against him; despite being a live performance, this all
seems very planned, very natural in its subtle transitions and shifts in mood.
The tonal transformations are always striking and surprising, and always timed
perfectly so that the pieceÆs overall moody consistency doesnÆt become overbearing.
As the music gently wends its way onward, it alternately evokes the dread of
night, the playfulness of children and the feeling of walking down an ancient
street in old historic Europe. Schaefer's meditative vinyl patchwork is as full
of variety and life as these snapshot impressions would seem to indicate, stretching
far beyond the specific locale where it was recorded. ThatÆs why the evolving
tapestry of sound emanating from SchaeferÆs turntables evokes this kind of connection
even without its original context of the darkened space where it was recorded.
The disc closes with the sound of applause -- apparently, recorded while Schaefer
had already fled the building, allowing the music to fade away of its own accord.
It's an appropriate symbolic close to the preceding hour, music and creator
both departing together like ghosts into the night.
All Music Guide, [François
Couture]
>
Equal parts sound installation, conceptual composition and live performance,
'Black Immure' was presented at the Casa de Serralves in Porto, Portugal on
June 29, 2002. A luxurious location in all aspects, the Casa is said to have
a fantastic natural reverb and sits among the landscaped gardens of the Museu
de Arte Contemporanea Serralves. Janek Schaefer decided to use both of these
elements for a site-specific piece. Prior to the performance he has recorded
various sounds in the building, including a few melodies on the Steinway piano.
During the performance he mixed those with electronics and records he found
in a Portuguese thrift shop. The title comes from the fact that he also shut
blinds and windows as the music progressed, trapping the audience into darkness.
As the music evaporated on its own, he ran into the gardens, leaving the applause
providing the coda for the work. The music remains very ambient throughout the
hour of its duration, oscillating between orchestrated field recordings and
atmospheric vinyl treatments. Some passages are a bit awkward, especially when
Schaefer introduces vinyl quotes in a more direct manner -- they interrupt the
mood. Otherwise, he put the natural reverb to good use. He seems to approach
the location with the utmost respect, which translates into music of an almost
ceremonial nature, calm and immersive. Very different from his shorter,
composed pieces, this improvisation is somewhat gentler on the listener, even
though it requires a longer attention span.
Urban Mag, (Belgium) [Peter Wullen]
>
For his new live album the British experimental sound architect Janek Schaefer
takes us along to the splendid location of the Casa de Serralves in the Portuguese
city of Porto. The Casa lies in the middle of the gardens of the Museu de Arte
Contemporana Serralves and possesses some superb natural acoustics. Schaefer
was invited to these splendid surroundings in June 2002 to prepare a performance
for a select public. The unique concert has been kept for posterity on this
recording of the small Portuguese label Sirr. On the O^Black ImmureO ('immure'
meaning as much as palisade) album, which is divided into 12 different phases,
Schaefer not only works his ubiquitous Triphonic Turntable but he also uses
the circumstances and the architecture of the Casa in every possible sense for
an extraordinary electroacoustic performance. Before the concert he manipulated
some especially chosen Portuguese vinyl. He also made some ghostly prerecordings
of the Steinway piano, which he found in the income hall of the Casa. During
the performance he 'played ' litterally and figuratively with the building by
slowly closing the enormous rolling shutters and the windows and this way wrapping
the public up in total darkness. At the end of the performance he threw the
terrace doors open wide again to let in the light of the starlit night. At the
same time a photosensitive installation conjured a magical shadow and light
patchwork on the walls and the frescos of the building. At the end of the performance
Schaefer finally left the villa and the public behind when he ran into the Portuguese
moonlit garden. As an unsuspecting listener, who did not have the luck to be
present on that magical night, O^Black ImmureO leads you from one surprise to
another. From the start you are sucked in by the hollow piano sounds and the
sultry sound manipulations. The performance comes to its peak during the sixth
phase with that lonely and distant piano motif where Schaefer partially succeeds
in transmitting the magic of the happening to the grooves of a small silicon
disc. But we assume nevertheless that you had to be present during that hot
Portuguese night to understand the full impact of his mix of architecture, natural
acoustics and turntable manipulations. Conceptually, this is Janek's most
successful album so far.
Fear Drop, (France) [Denis Boyer]
>
De plus en plus attir? par les field
recordings et les liens entre Architecture et son, Janek Schaefer multiplie
les exp?riences de topographie sonore. Arm? de ses outils mais surtout de son
imagination et de sa po?sie, il documente et transcende les ?manations acoustiques
de lieux. Pour ce disque, il a pass? trois jours ?O Porto, pr?s du mus?e dOArt
Contemporain. Les jardins environnants et les diff?rentes formes de vie qui
sOy expriment ont certainement offert une mati?re premi?re foisonnante. Car
cOest comme dans chacune de ses I?Nuvres compos?es un v?ritable micromonde qui
se d?voile, tiss? avec subtilit? et m?lang? dOactions sur vinyles comme il en
a lOhabitude, notamment gr?nce aux platines quOil a cr??es. Black immure est
construit sur douze pi?ces, plus fragilement ?piques que d?monstratrices des
techniques de Schaefer. Les vents y sont nombreux, colportant des brumes m?lancoliques
qui laissent entrevoir des mouvements m?talliques et des boucles estropi?es,
lumineuses et garantes dOouvertures sur des fragments de m?lodies. DOautres
boucles, ?vanescentes, cr?ent parfois le rythme, comme des grillons dans un
tableau estival. Dans cet univers o? lOesth?tique industrielle est encore forte,
le d?passement des codes est ?vident car ce qui est bien plus quOun reportage,
ou lOaccumulation de reportages, est aussi un travail profond?ment pastoral,
comme un pas vers une nouvelle ?mancipation des bruits gris : leur ?veil aux
saisons.
The Wire, (UK) [Philip Sherburne]
>
One of a new generation of experimental
turntablists, Janek Schaefer came to prominence for his custom-built, tri-phonic
turntable, which he routes through various effects in performances that summon
a druggy, slo-mo Plunderphonic haze out of sad scraps of discarded vinyl. Black
Immure(Music from the Casa de Serralves in Twelve Phases) documents a recent
performance at Porto, Portugals Museu de Arte Contemporanea Serralves. Very
much a site-specific piece, Schaefer prepared for the performance with three
days of field recording on the grounds of the museum and the modernist Casa
de Serralves, playing the sites Steinway grand piano, and editing these raw
recordings. Equipped with this material and an armload of locally purchased
vinyl, Schaefer performed the improvised piece within the Casa, shuttering the
interior of the space in mid-performance to take the audience from light to
darkness. While the spatial aspect is lost in the audio recording (aside from
occasional rumblings and rattlings that may or may not be sourced by the shutter
mechanisms), Black Immure certainly doesnt lack any sense of architectural scale.
Yawning chasms of echo and massive sheets of almost impenetrable drone actually
evoke a space far older, and grander, than any Modernist construction, instead
summoning images of fortresses, barren plains, interminable corridors, and bottomless
pits. Slow, molten string passages flow over jagged percussion figures. Reverb-laden
piano chords float out of the ether like echoes of a parlor from a century ago.
Tungsten-bright high tones worm out of the corners of the room, like a tea-kettle
keyed to the buildings resonant frequency. Everything slowly churns, as though
the building were sloughing off years of lived history at a glaciers pace, shedding
everything -- meals, conversations, births and deaths and restless nights in
a final process of dissolution. Composed seemingly on the fly, no sense of structure
orders the piece. Instead, slowly winding passages of strings and creaking percussion
blur together, creating the impression of a vast maze within which one has become
utterly lost.
Beat People webzine, (Spain) [Jose Manuel Cisneros]
>
La electroacoestica vuelve a ser la
receta utilizaba por Janek Schaefer en sus producciones. En esta ocasi?\n el
escenario elegido para la toma de sonidos ha sido la portuguesa Casa de Serralves,
pr?\xima a Oporto. El inefable productor pas?\ tres d?fas captando con micr?\fonos
de ambiente los m?oNs diversos sonidos (incluso de "portazos" o del propio viento)
de este edificio vanguardista y el resultado se muestra todav?fa m?oNs experimental
que en su anterior y todav?fa muy pr?\ximo trabajo "Pulled Under" (tan cercano
que tan s?\lo hace unos d?fas pudisteis verlo comentado en estas l?fneas). La principal
peculiaridad reside en el acompa?|amiento que en muchas de las piezas realiza
el propio Janek vali?ndose de su piano Steinway, logrando as?f dotar al minutaje
de una particular e inquietante impronta. Merece la pena escucharlo. Autor.
Ultra E-zine, (Belgium)
>
Ahh, ghosts
of villa's past... Mr. Schaefer was invited to Portugal and spent three days
collecting, manipulating and editing sounds found in and around the Casa de
Serralves and the Museu de Arte Contemporaneo Serralves in Porto. He then gave
an improvised concert in the Casa (it's located in the museum's gardens and
has a fine natural reverb, alledgedly) by combining those sounds with the notes
of a Steinway piano and the sounds of locally purchased vinyl. (You may remember
Mr. Schaefer from his triphonic turntable - expect photographs of one his performances
with it at the first Fat Cat label night somewhere around 1999 in Hasselt (Belgium)
online on our site soon.) Now there's the cd of the concert, on the Portuguese
Sirr label. It's beautifully packaged, with a cover that uses black & white
photographs by Mr. Schaefer. Since the concert took place before an audience
enveloped in darkness, this cd 'ought' to be played in the dark as well... Whatever
the lighting, the performance is fine, though not immensely compelling either.
It builds up slowly but is eventful enough to stir the imagination, e.g. phases
5 and 9+10 are more than just souvenir recordings. Even so, this cd is more
'for collectors only', e.g. for afficionados of the museum or of Mr. Schaefer's
work.
Touching Extremes, (Italy) [Massimo Ricci]
>
Soundtrack to a Portuguese installation
by Schaefer, 'Black immure' is yet another great piece of new music by the always
improving London based turntablist/composer. Though most of the sounds come
- as usual - from vinyl records played by the author on modified machines, here
we're treated to various grades of concrete sounds, mostly made by Janek himself
while "preparing" the audience to be blinded by obscurity in the villa where
the action takes place. Speaking of the overall result, the music is as always
very beautiful, tending to grey-to-dark tonalities, full of looping and glissando
slow motions, spiralling the listeners into trance and void. At the end, Janek
can be heard running away from the scene, leaving the people 'comfortably numb'
until the sound becomes silence and the final applause closes the performance.
What a smart exit!
&etc webzine, (Australia)
>
Schaefer's complex and intriguing works have crossed here twice before
(2001_17, 2002_08) as have the Portuguese Sirr label a couple of times. This
release presents a concert from the Casa de Serralves in the Museu de Arte Contemporanea
Serralves combining sounds recorded in the building and grounds, a piano and
locally purchased disk, captured live. The concert has been sectioned into 12
parts. In his notes, Schaefer tells us he closed the blinds around the room,
immersing (immure = enclose) the audience in darkness. I think you can here
this, a trundling clatter, but it also suggests the best way to listen to the
piece
There are many changes and moods to the work
Typical of the more intricate and closely worked pieces, very hard to describe
Absurd, (Greece)
>
Black Immure is janek schaefer's cd on the portugese sirr records. A
cd in 12 parts that was recorded in an houra^s conert at the casa de serralves,
where janek spent a few days before the concert recording various sounds inside
the building or surrounding ones plus tracked down some records of portugese
music to use and here we experience a documentation of the live set that occurred
on june 29, 2002 (almost a year ago) that definitely should be credited as another
fantastic entry in his discography so far. I don't know but janek has the
ability to create some really magnificent soundscapes that capture you since
the first 'drone' heard of them in an oneiric journey, such as this one.
Aquarius Records (USA)
>
Before his commissioned performance at the Casa de Serralves in Porto,
Portugal in 2002, Janek Schaefer spent several days accruing sounds from the
surrounding areas. While collecting his usual armload of antiquated vinyl for
his avant turntablist collages, Schaefer also made recordings of a Steinway
piano as well as a series of gestural actions that made use of the building's
natural reverb. The manipulation of that natural reverb -- both in the electronic
manipulation of the pre-recorded sounds and in physical actions made during
the performance -- were the crux of Shaefer's performance. The electronic aspect
of "Black Immure" follows a similar path as his last couple of records "Pulled
Under" and "Le Petit Theatre De Mercelis," with divergent currents of mysterious
sounds abstracted into innumerably bleak surfaces. Schaefer punctuates his atmospheres
with looped samples from those old records and the piano recordings, using a
technique similar to Philip Jeck's, crafting those sonatas into oblique fragments
of memory that have been faded beyond all recognition. Within these portions
of the performance, the natural reverb of the space does blur the edges of each
sound ; however, when Schaefer creates dense metallic clattering from slamming
all of the windows shut in the space and dragging chains throughout the space,
the reverb takes on an Industrial din. Altogether, "Black Immure" is an impressive
piece of work.