Available to listen to and buy at Bandcamp
Release date #1: 21 July 2021; #3 23 December 2023
Format: digital download. Artwork and typography by Landschaft.
This archive work originated around 2007 and I rediscovered it in a review of my sound and visual works. The cover art is a photograph of sogetsu taken in the Brisbase Gallery of Modern Art in 2017. The sound piece languished years waiting for the magical association with sogetsu to arrive. I remastered the work and segmented the original 2 hour work to six parts.
Sogetsu is the modern re-imagination of traditional ancient 'ikebana', the Japanese art of flower sculpture. A less formalised expression of the art. The cover art is of the vertical vase form, 'Nageire'. I have more to say, artistically, about sogetsu and have suffixed this work #1 in anticipation of future works. To see sogetsu in an appropriate setting was for me a mind opening experience.
This aleatoric (chance music) happened as I was constructing a new Absynth patch. It lent itself well to some controlled randomisation; triggers of notes in an ascending phrigian scale. There are just three layers - 2x effected (granularised) brass and a shifting undercurrent drone. This work sits very well within my harmonius sogetsu theme. An empty room but for one white chrysanthamum.
In listening to this work and writing four months after publication, I am convinced self-appraisal benefits from a rest after the close focus of creation. So it is with this work. I was not entirely persuaded of the validity of Sogetsu no3. Now I am. It says something. My Sogetsu series is intentionally arid. I have stripped the human out of my music practice, separating the Sogetsu pieces from the emotional-historical contexts in my thematic works. The Sogetsu metaphore is clear. Sogetsu Ikebana is concerned with the definition of space through the ultra-discipline of the Japanses aesthetic. Creating a harmonius relationship between 'organic' materials and the locations in which they are placed. My moment of epiphany: viewing a Sogetsu Ikebana piece in Brisbane's Gallery of Modern Art. It all made sense: I had to translate that physical form into noise vibrations.