3" cd
edition: 1000
new plastic music
2008
- A Slow Moving Boat
in april 2007, i made several recordings on a ferry in norway, of the engine resonating through the metal hull. later, i recorded my voice humming and singing to the ferry, using it as a harmonic guide or drone. i then erased the original ferry recording, and replaced it with a bowed banjo. the piece was created for the FM ferry experiment, and broadcast from the staten island ferry in ny. special thanks to jorgen larsson for the norwegian journey, and valerie tavere for including the piece in the FM ferry project.
- reviews:
It must have been an odd sight, in April 2007. Steve Roden fits on a ferry in Norway and he is singing and humming along with the engine of the ferry. Later on he replaces the engine sounds with that of a bowed banjo, and no doubt layers his own voice in various harmonic constellations. Steve Roden has a relatively simple tool at hand – just a few sounds, but as before he very cleverly knows how to create a great piece of music with it. Minimal, refined, delicate. His humming in various shades and shapes, with the bowing of the banjo in the background, makes a nice piece of music that at fifteen minutes has captured the right length. What else can there be said? A mantra like piece. Elegant music.
(FdW)/vital weekly
---Steve Roden’s current output threatens to rival the prodigious release schedule of Machinefabriek, but his work is no less compelling for that. In this beatific 3″inch cd, taken from a special broadcast on the Staten Island ferry, he elects to build a piece from thread-bare sonic materials of bowed banjo and the looping traceries of his voice. Roden evokes a transcendental eulogy from an environmental recording of a simple ferry around the waters of Oslo fjord.
Spatial and historical contexts are re-arranged, as the source recording of this piece was to be found in the motor hum of the boat itself, but Roden, to his intuitive credit, shuns standard acousmatic practice and removes the audio signature altogether to create a lovely 15 minute spectacle, in which human emotion is propelled to the fore. With the feeling akin to an 8th century Gaelic lament it takes precedence over the academic austerity that one finds in much of today’s sound art.
(paul baran)/ myspace blog
---Risalgono alla metà degli anni ’90 i primi esperimenti di Steve Roden con strumenti del tutto inusuali ed oggetti di design che nelle mani del poliedrico artista diventano vere e proprie fonti sonore: si pensi ad album come Splint (the soul of wood) (New Plastic music, 1997), Lamp (within/without the skin) (New Plastic music, 1998), e Chair (a subscape of resonance) (New Plastic music,1999). Visioni acustiche che sfidano i convenzionali approcci all’ascolto e che attraverso abili manipolazioni scolpiscono sfumature ed identità catturando l’essenza stessa dell’oggetto.
Una materica fisicità che in A slow moving boat prende forma attraverso le incisioni che l’artista realizzò nella primavera del 2007 su un traghetto per la Norvegia, registrando il rombo del motore attraverso le pareti stesse della nave. Incisioni che diventano pretesto su cui comporre concretezze drones di un banjo che si reinventa a colpi d’archetto, per poi diventare guida spirituale di una linea vocale tanto mistica quanto incantata. Una linea vocale che si sdoppia lasciandosi alle spalle le frammentazioni in lettere di The Radio (Sonoris,1996), per focalizzare l’attenzione poi su simbolismi timbrici. Poesie per oggetti dimenticati che nel silenzio diventano chiave di lettura di personali rielaborazioni della memoria sonora.
Miniature essenziali dalla tiratura limitata e dal formato tascabile (si tratta infatti di un 3”) per quindici minuti di sensibili intelligenti (s)culture sonore.
Sara Bracco/sentireascotare website
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