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Sounds Reviewed #6/2013
African Audio Documents - Effacer le tableau
(AAD01, CD-r, XI/2013)
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Already a few minutes of attentive listening convinced me: this is really an awesome, baffling, mysterious and important release. It is a blast on all levels. Pierre Ndoki's "Effacer le tableau" (the first release of his project "African Audio Documents") combines serious aural research with poetic inventiveness and imagination that has no equal (cf. maybe it is comparable to Dominik Fernow's most recent project "Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement") . It brings the serious and essential minimalism back in. It is a hybrid, that re-connects and re-channels several important streams in modern Sound/Art from electro-acoustics, sound-installation, audio-documentary, minimal music, audio-auto-biographics, musique concrète and other relevant and serious forms of sonic spectrality, pure sounds and microtonality.
Already the poly-valent and clever use of the title "Effacer le tableau" shows that Ndoki knows what he is doing and aiming at. Effacer le tableau (putting the real meaning and its (brutal) african context aside for a moment) could be read as an audio-poetic imperative inviting the listener to put in brackets everything s/he thinks to know about sounds (mostly too much !). Effacer le tableau, premièrement ! Electro-Acoustic-Music and other forms of (Electro-)Minimalism need different and well trained listeners, because an unattentive, ill-informed and untrained listener is completely lost in this field of non-anthropomorphic sounds.
If you are willing to follow Pierre Ndoki's golden rule - Effacer le tableau, premièrement ! - listening could be the perfect tool to "percer le mur" (van Gogh) of representational ideas of sound and art in general. Eye-deology, so to speak. Helping to discover lines of flight out of the capitalist world of sound, music and visible commodities.
In this sense Deleuze/Guattari wrote in "Mille Plateaux": "L'art n'est jamais une fin, il n'est qu'un instrument pour tracer les lignes de vie, c'est-à-dire tous ces devenirs réels, qui ne se produisent pas simplement dans l'art, toutes ces fuites actives, qui ne consistent pas à fuir dans l'art, à se réfugier dans l'art, ces déterritorialisations positives, qui ne vont pas se reterritorialiser sur l'art, mais bien plutôt l'emporter avec elles, vers le régions de l'asignifiant, de l'asubjectif et du sans visage. (...) Défaire le visage, c'est la même chose que percer le mur du signifiant, sortir du trou noir de la subjectivité: cherchez vos trous noirs et vos murs blancs, connaissez-les, connaissez vos visages, vous ne les déferez pas autrement, vous ne tracerez pas autrement vos lignes de fuites."
In this sense Deleuze/Guattari wrote in "Mille Plateaux": "L'art n'est jamais une fin, il n'est qu'un instrument pour tracer les lignes de vie, c'est-à-dire tous ces devenirs réels, qui ne se produisent pas simplement dans l'art, toutes ces fuites actives, qui ne consistent pas à fuir dans l'art, à se réfugier dans l'art, ces déterritorialisations positives, qui ne vont pas se reterritorialiser sur l'art, mais bien plutôt l'emporter avec elles, vers le régions de l'asignifiant, de l'asubjectif et du sans visage. (...) Défaire le visage, c'est la même chose que percer le mur du signifiant, sortir du trou noir de la subjectivité: cherchez vos trous noirs et vos murs blancs, connaissez-les, connaissez vos visages, vous ne les déferez pas autrement, vous ne tracerez pas autrement vos lignes de fuites."
"Effacer le tableau" is definitely a subtle composition: im-pressive, massive without mass (in the physical sense), an aural materiality without matter, vibrating, monochrome, imploding/exploding, thoughtfully folded back in time and space.
§2 The Magic of Expectation: playing with masks
Relevant art is always a play with masks and background narratives - or call it the space for de-personalisation - ask Artaud, Nietzsche or Kierkegaard. Consequently it should be no surprise, that an artist deeply indebted to Africa - t h e m a s k e d a n d v i r t u a l l y u n k n o w n c o n t i n e n t p a r e x c e l l e n c e - uses masks and complex background narratives and artistical strategies in his project. This is by far one of the very few absolutely convincing HNW-background-narratives and conceptual framings that worked for me completely. It should be also mentioned, that the complete design and concept of the project is absolutely outstanding and thoughtful.
This is an ultra-poetic and thoughtful melting of form and content. Pierre Ndoki is opening all neurones of the brain for remembrance, reinscription, silence and, repetition. A short look on Ndoki's blog (click here) shows that his narrative and soundworld will expand thematically and aesthetically (see §11 of this review) in all kinds of directions. So it is really an intellectual pleasure for any future listener to un-pack all the intricacies and implications of this project.
Since my blog is build as a landing site for all kinds of surprising and refreshing artifacts, I was very glad, that Ndoki contacted me to sent the first parts of his immense audio-poetic invention. Ndoki shows that HNW (= as always this blog uses this acronym for serious Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism only and for nothing else ) is not a style. It is from time to time (!) a neccessary tool for deeply thoughtful and private expressions produced by artists that keep the dimension of futurity open ....
Since my blog is build as a landing site for all kinds of surprising and refreshing artifacts, I was very glad, that Ndoki contacted me to sent the first parts of his immense audio-poetic invention. Ndoki shows that HNW (= as always this blog uses this acronym for serious Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism only and for nothing else ) is not a style. It is from time to time (!) a neccessary tool for deeply thoughtful and private expressions produced by artists that keep the dimension of futurity open ....
§3 Afrikanische Spiele / Jeux Africains / Somber dreams
Pierre Ndoki's African Audio Documents invites you to experience your own innermost and outermost - intimate and extimate - Africa. An artificial implant - because there is no Africa as such. But he also relates your imaginary or imagined Africa to the horrors of the most recent history of Africa. So it is really rewarding (if not essential) to follow all the traces Ndoki has laid out so carefully. There is a real historical background behind all his recordings. It is one of the most carefully and thoughtfully conceived HNW-projects - so pay attention !
So please take the name of his project African Audio Documents seriously. But draw the conclusions yourself ! And please try to enrich your image of Africa with books like Raymond Roussel's "Impressions d'Afrique" (1910), Michel Leiris's "L'Afrique fantôme" (1934), the artworks and theories of Jean Dubuffet, the last dreams of Arthur Rimbaud, Joseph Conrad, or to give a more recent example Yannick Haenel's novel "Les renard pâles" (2013) based on a central-myth of an african tribe called the Dogon.
For me, the release "Effacer le tableau", was a good opportunity to revisit the famous novel "Afrikanische Spiele" by Ernst Jünger written in 1936. It is about a very young man dreaming of discovering "his" Africa, the river Nil and the Congo. In a key passage Ernst Jünger wrote: "Es gibt eine Zeit, in der dem Herzen das Geheimnisvolle nur räumlich, nur auf weissen Flecken der Landkarte erreichbar erscheint und in der alles Dunkle und Unbekannte eine mächtige Anziehung ausübt. Lange, halb trunkene Wachträume während meiner nächtlichen Spaziergänge durch den Stadtwall hatten mir jene entfernten Länder so nahegerückt, dass nur noch der Entschluss in sie einzudringen und ihrer Genüsse teilhaftig zu sein. Mich zog vielmehr eine Zone an, in der der Kampf menschlicher Gewalten rein und zwecklos zum Ausdruck kam. Auch die zweite Nacht verbrachte ich auf meinem Segeltuch. Früh wurde ich von Benoit geweckt; er forderte mich auf, Afrika zu sehen."
Ndoki delivers somber dreams of dark continents: it is a "double promenade (...) le voyage extérieur géographique des distances indecomposables, le voyage historique intérieur suivant des intensités enveloppantes. (...) elle porte le réel hors de son principe où il est exactement produit par la machine désirante." (Anti-Oedipe, 104).
§4 The Dogon-Egg: Intensities
The crisp minimalism of "Effacer le tableau" opens and amplifies feverish fantasies and daydreams. It is a pure cerebral music with a massive narrative floating in between the sounds like in the Dogon-Egg:
(L'oeuf de dogon et la répartition d'intensités,)
§5 L'homme au point zéro / Humanity at point zero
Sadly the image of the cradle and point-zero of civilisation co-incide in "Africa". "Africa" could also be seen as an reflecting image of European underworlds and hells. Look at "Africa" and tell me what you see ? Somber and uncanny dreams of a violent Africa are evoked on "Effacer le tableau" and the subsequent releases. To call this a documentary about an African tragedy would be an insult and a sedative, because it projects worn european theatrical forms on real exploitation, violence and poverty. Something else it at work here.
In an essay with the title "L'homme au point zéro" written by the french poet-thinker Maurice Blanchot dedicated to his (then deceased) friend Georges Bataille we can read the lines: "Monde barbare, sans respect, sans humanité. Il nous vide atrocement de tout ce que nous aimons et aimons être, nous chasse du bonheur de nos refuges, du faux-semblant de nos vérités, détruit ce à quoi nous appartenons et parfois se détruit lui-même. Effrayante épreuve. Mais cette contestation, précisement parce qu'elle nous laisse pauvre de tout, sauf de la puissance, nous donne peut-être aussi la chance qui accompagne toute rupture : quand on est contraint de renoncer à soi, il faut périr ou commencer ; périr afin de recommencer. Tel serait alors le sens de la tâche que représente le mythe de l'homme sans mythe: l'espoir, l'angoisse et l'illusion de l'homme au point zéro" (Maurice Blanchot, L'homme au point zéro).
A few lines to support the intricacies of the poetic-audio-documentary character of the project "African Audio Documents" - and something to think about, when you listen attentively.
Sadly the image of the cradle and point-zero of civilisation co-incide in "Africa". "Africa" could also be seen as an reflecting image of European underworlds and hells. Look at "Africa" and tell me what you see ? Somber and uncanny dreams of a violent Africa are evoked on "Effacer le tableau" and the subsequent releases. To call this a documentary about an African tragedy would be an insult and a sedative, because it projects worn european theatrical forms on real exploitation, violence and poverty. Something else it at work here.
In an essay with the title "L'homme au point zéro" written by the french poet-thinker Maurice Blanchot dedicated to his (then deceased) friend Georges Bataille we can read the lines: "Monde barbare, sans respect, sans humanité. Il nous vide atrocement de tout ce que nous aimons et aimons être, nous chasse du bonheur de nos refuges, du faux-semblant de nos vérités, détruit ce à quoi nous appartenons et parfois se détruit lui-même. Effrayante épreuve. Mais cette contestation, précisement parce qu'elle nous laisse pauvre de tout, sauf de la puissance, nous donne peut-être aussi la chance qui accompagne toute rupture : quand on est contraint de renoncer à soi, il faut périr ou commencer ; périr afin de recommencer. Tel serait alors le sens de la tâche que représente le mythe de l'homme sans mythe: l'espoir, l'angoisse et l'illusion de l'homme au point zéro" (Maurice Blanchot, L'homme au point zéro).
A few lines to support the intricacies of the poetic-audio-documentary character of the project "African Audio Documents" - and something to think about, when you listen attentively.
§6 Grids and Frames
The crisp, rigorously de-naturalized and dry sounds on "Effacer le tableau" work like a kind of contrast-liquid, or conceptual grid or frame to open a more artificial and sophisticated TIME/SPACE-articulation. Making the medium of sound - the air or simply matter if you like - nearly tactile and visible. These sounds point towards a tension between visibility, tactility and audibility. This recording is relevant, because it opens a huge space in which prominent ideas of the anti-mimetic character of modern art could resonate. This recordings delivers also very good arguments to re-inscribe HNW into the history of radical minimalism and anti-mimetism in the Fine Arts (let's say at least since Mondrian) and spectral, micro-tonal, electronic and electro-acoustic music. HNW is not a derivative of HN. PERIOD.
In her now famous paper on "Grids" the american art-historian Rosalind Krauss wrote: "There are two ways in which the grid functions to declare the modernity of modern art. One is spatial; the other is temporal. In the spatial sense, the grid states the autonomy of the realm of art. Flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is antinatural, antimimetic, antireal. It is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature. In the flatness that results from its coordinates, the grid is the means of crowding out the dimensions of the real and replacing them with the lateral spread of a single surface.
In the overall regularity of its organization, it is the result not of imitation, but of aesthetic decree. Insofar as its order is that of pure relationship, the grid is a way of abrogating the claims of natural objects to have an order particular to themselves; the relationships in the aesthetic field are shown by the grid to be in a world apart and, with respect to natural objects, to be both prior and final. The grid declares the space of art to be at once autonomous and autotelic.
In the temporal dimension, the grid is an emblem of modernity by being just that: the form that is ubiquitous in the art of our century, while appearing nowhere, nowhere at all, in the art of the last one. In that great chain of reactions by which modernism was born out of the efforts of the nineteenth century, one final shift resulted in breaking the chain. By "discovering" the grid, cubism, de Stijl, Mondrian, Malevich . . . landed in a place that was out of reach of everything that went before. Which is to say, they landed in the present, and everything else was declared to be the past.
If we open any tract - Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non- Objective World, for instance - we will find that Mondrian and Malevich are not discussing canvas or pigment or graphite or any other form of matter. They are talking about Being or Mind or Spirit. From their point of view, the grid is a staircase to the Universal, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example, we could think about Ad Reinhardt who, despite his repeated insistence that "Art is art," ended up by painting a series of black nine-square grids in which the motif that inescapably emerges is a Greek cross. " (Rosalind Krauss 1979)
Keep this in mind - when you listen to Pierre Ndoki's "African Audio Documents". His works are a constant play with framings and un-framings, focussing and un-focussing. An elegant floating in between thinking and listening, inside and outside: a conceptual grid or filter-system that's moving through space and time enflaming dark fantasies and desperate awakenings.
§7 Electro-acoustic textures - Essential minimalism.
Pierre Ndoki's project "African Audio Documents" is an essential and serious research in the field of electronic and electro-acoustic minimalism. It could be easily reconnected to the contemporary non-anthropomorphic soundworlds of Carsten Nicolai, Ryoji Ikeda, Emptyset, Eleh, Basic House, the sadly deceased Zbigniew Karkowski, Francisco López to name a few - but also to the worlds of the classical minimalisms of Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Edgard Varèse, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Pierre Schaeffer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, LaMonte Young, Walter Marchetti, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, etc, etc. [All references are deliberately chosen from different contextes to open the eyes and ears for different viewpoints and to extract essential soundworlds out of the context of the "noise-scene" (for me a deeply pejorative and useless term)]
This project understands that sounds are absolutely non-anthropomorph, non-natural, non-related to the interiority of the listener or the composer, rigorously non-mimetic - they are almost like colours in monochrome or abstract paintings. There are no natural receptors for sounds or pre-given, pre-configured , symmetrical human correlates to sound-emissions. But who stated that sounds are related to humans - alone ? The late capitalist music-industry, who else ? Obviously it is not enough to have ears to listen - listening is a question of training - like everything else. There are no guarantees here: Whoever has ears ought to hear !
§8 Subtle Bass-Undercurrents.
If you are the owner of a multi-speaker soundsystem with a seperate subwoofer please play it in 3D Surround. Press play and switch-off the lights. Let the composition resculpture and alter the Time-Space of your room ... bass .... slumbering bass .... subtle bass-undercurrents ... out of my subwoofers .... so cleary composed com-ponents ... never heard something like this before ... bass at the edge of existence ... nearly unperceivable .... at certain volumes carved out .... like a stone ....
Like a good monochrome - or a so called abstract painting - the composition reacts. It has different effects on the listener if you experiment in terms of loudness or volume. I would prefer the term "volume" because it is more related to the space in which the sound is played in. It describes the extension (also a title of a marvellous composition by the german composer Mathias Spahlinger) of the effect the sound has in a given room.
"Effacer le tableau" focusses on the aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and listening. It is no secret that this blog is seriously (!) interested in the research of basic acoustic phenomena at the edge to be perceived as "music". This blog is a plea to discover the complete sonic field without any reserves. This record here is a good exemple for an absolutely sensitive musician ! This is a recording you will listen to more than once - absolutely exceptional in this field !
§9 Explosante-fixe et magique-circonstancielle
Another collector of African Art, the french poet and father of surrealism André Breton wrote in the final passage of his book "Amour fou":
"La beauté convulsive sera érotique-voilée,
"La beauté convulsive sera érotique-voilée,
explosante-fixe, magique-circonstancielle, ou ne sera pas".
Take this as a hint when you listen to Pierre Ndoki's soundworlds frequently and attentively ! This is also the title of a brilliant composition by Pierre Boulez - risk an ear ... or two ! By the way the acronym A.A.D. for African Audio Documents points also back to the good old days when analog recordings and codes were recoded or transcoded into digital CD-codes. One of the codes was A-nalog A-nalog D-igital - which meant analog source, analog mixing, digital recoding. Another proof for the deeply thoughtful character of this project ...
§10 Effacer le tableau: an African Aural Suprematism.
"Effacer le tableau" is the starting point for an African Aural Suprematism. In a famous passage written by one of the "fathers" of Suprematism Kasimir Malevich distinguishes two basic types of creation: "one, initiated by the conscious mind, serves practical life, so-called, and deals with concrete visual phenomena; the other, stemming from the subconscious or superconcious mind, stands apart from all practical utility and treats abstract phenomena" (Malevich, The Non-Objective World). Abstract phenomena are related to the ineffable. The primary goal of suprematist art is to provide the occasion for the latter form of awareness in the viewer to appear by evoking the ineffable. The experience of the ineffable helps to overcome the plagues of representation and mimesis. Since the awareness of the infinite is sub- or super-conscious, it cannot be represented figuratively but must be presented nonobjectively.
It should be obvious, that Ndoki's work "Effacer le tableau" is informed by all the intricacies of Modern Avantgarde Abstractionism(s) and Minimalism(s). I would even risk to say, that he takes the suprematist abstraction on step further from the visual to the aural and from Europe to Africa - that's the reason why I would like to call his Sound-Aesthetics an "African Aural Suprematism". In the words of Malevich again: "The black square on the white field was the first form in which non-objective feeling came to be expressed. The black square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling" (Malevich, The Non-Objective World).
So please follow the radicalized minimalism(s) of Ndoki and cut off the ear from the eye ! Let the frequencies alone structure your "thoughts" - let them effacer le tableau ... black and white, white and black, white on black, black on white, zeros and ones, ones and zeros, zeros projected on ones, ones projected on zeros - contrasts .... and primordial differences ... this piece ought to be imagined to have been played in a remote cabin made of clay with flickering rests of electricity causing these sounds - morse-codes from an abyssal Inner-Outer-Africa. Or maybe a secretly registered concussion, or repercussion of age old earthquakes, or cochlea-memories from an antilope.
This is really an Abstract-Anti-Expressionism - open only for a different plane of consciousness - close to Malevich's, Artaud's and Deleuze/Guattari's ideas of it. Antonin Artaud wrote in this sense in his famous text "Les Tarahumaras" quoted and included in an important passage of "Mille Plateaux": "Artaud pèse et mesure chaque de ses mots: la conscience "sait ce qui est bon pour elle et ce qui ne lui vaut rien. (...) Elle sait surtout jusqu'où va son être, et jusqu'où il n'est pas encore allé (...) Plan où la conscience normale atteint pas mais où Ciguri nous permet d'atteindre, et qui est le mystère même de toute poésie. Mais il ya dans l'être humain un autre plan celui-là obscur, informe, où la conscience n'est pas entrée, mais qui l'entoure comme un prolongement inéclairci ou d'une menace suivant le cas. Et qui dégage aussi des sensations aventureuses, des perceptions"(Les Tarahumaras). [...] Ce n'est plus un Moi qui sent, agit, et se rappelle, c'est "une brume brillante, une buée jaune et sombre", qui a des affects et éprouve des mouvements, des vitesses." (Mille Plateaux).
It should be obvious, that Ndoki's work "Effacer le tableau" is informed by all the intricacies of Modern Avantgarde Abstractionism(s) and Minimalism(s). I would even risk to say, that he takes the suprematist abstraction on step further from the visual to the aural and from Europe to Africa - that's the reason why I would like to call his Sound-Aesthetics an "African Aural Suprematism". In the words of Malevich again: "The black square on the white field was the first form in which non-objective feeling came to be expressed. The black square = feeling, the white field = the void beyond this feeling" (Malevich, The Non-Objective World).
So please follow the radicalized minimalism(s) of Ndoki and cut off the ear from the eye ! Let the frequencies alone structure your "thoughts" - let them effacer le tableau ... black and white, white and black, white on black, black on white, zeros and ones, ones and zeros, zeros projected on ones, ones projected on zeros - contrasts .... and primordial differences ... this piece ought to be imagined to have been played in a remote cabin made of clay with flickering rests of electricity causing these sounds - morse-codes from an abyssal Inner-Outer-Africa. Or maybe a secretly registered concussion, or repercussion of age old earthquakes, or cochlea-memories from an antilope.
This is really an Abstract-Anti-Expressionism - open only for a different plane of consciousness - close to Malevich's, Artaud's and Deleuze/Guattari's ideas of it. Antonin Artaud wrote in this sense in his famous text "Les Tarahumaras" quoted and included in an important passage of "Mille Plateaux": "Artaud pèse et mesure chaque de ses mots: la conscience "sait ce qui est bon pour elle et ce qui ne lui vaut rien. (...) Elle sait surtout jusqu'où va son être, et jusqu'où il n'est pas encore allé (...) Plan où la conscience normale atteint pas mais où Ciguri nous permet d'atteindre, et qui est le mystère même de toute poésie. Mais il ya dans l'être humain un autre plan celui-là obscur, informe, où la conscience n'est pas entrée, mais qui l'entoure comme un prolongement inéclairci ou d'une menace suivant le cas. Et qui dégage aussi des sensations aventureuses, des perceptions"(Les Tarahumaras). [...] Ce n'est plus un Moi qui sent, agit, et se rappelle, c'est "une brume brillante, une buée jaune et sombre", qui a des affects et éprouve des mouvements, des vitesses." (Mille Plateaux).
§11 Une cartographie africaine, un voyage sur place
The best you can say about soundworlds is that they travel to your ears and make you travel accordingly. These soundworlds are like soundcards from strange, unknown continents. Pierre Ndoki's Sound-Art project African Audio Documents is such a project of multi-dimensional soundcards (understood in analogy to postcards) he sends us from "his" "Africa".
Soundcards are game-cards and geo-graphic, geo-politic and geo-aesthetic cards at once. These cards are not re-productive or re-presentational. They are productive. They produce the territory in the act of description or transcription. A card - write Deleuze/Gauttari: "ne reproduit pas un inconscient fermé sur lui-même, elle le construit. Elle concourt à la connexion des champs, au déblocage des corps sans organes, à leur ouverture maximum sur un plan de consistance. Elle fait elle-même partie du rhizome" (Mille Plateaux).
In this sense Pierre Ndoki's project African Audio Documents delivers a complex audio-haptico-spiritual-fictional cartography of Africa - no more, no less. It is an intriguing complex of real facts from the most recent entanglement of African-French and African history, feverish dreams of somber continents, and subtle audio-poetic-reflections about the nature and conditions of minimal electro-acoustic soundworlds.
Ndoki's soundcards open up immense and unheard of possibilities of immobile voyages. His soundcards let secrets travels through the labyrinths of your cochlea supported by uncertain and risky "musical" forms and frequencies. "Voyage sur la place, c'est le nom de toutes le intensités, même si elles se developpent aussi en extension. Penser, c'est voyager (...) Voyager en lisse c'est tout un devenir, et encore un devenir difficile, incertain." (Mille Plateaux).
During the writing of this review Pierre Ndoki was so kind to provide me with the three subsequent releases of his immense project African-Audio-Documents entitled "Cellule Africaine" (AAD02, CD-r, 40 min.), "Hermetica"(AAD05, Mini-CD-r, 10 min. ) and "Loi fondamentale" (AAD04, CD-r, 50 min.).The spectrum goes from raw analogue HNW ("Cellule Africaine"), to an intricate Audio-Documentary-Sound-Collage ("Hermetica") or fantastic Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism ("Loi fondamentale").
Since this blog is a voice for the singular and the unique, it would be a violation of my own working principles to treat these three releases in an overhasted manner. Each of these releases would deserve an attentive listener and a different review. As you can see Effacer le tableau is the starting point of one of the most interesting, inventive, fascinating and conceptually thick and strong projects in HNW. It is a strong recabling of Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism(s) with other Avantgarde-Sound-Art-Formats. It will be surprising and rewarding to watch this rhizome grow over the next years ! A quote from the first e-mail Ndoki sent me, gives a good summary of his ideas:
The best you can say about soundworlds is that they travel to your ears and make you travel accordingly. These soundworlds are like soundcards from strange, unknown continents. Pierre Ndoki's Sound-Art project African Audio Documents is such a project of multi-dimensional soundcards (understood in analogy to postcards) he sends us from "his" "Africa".
Soundcards are game-cards and geo-graphic, geo-politic and geo-aesthetic cards at once. These cards are not re-productive or re-presentational. They are productive. They produce the territory in the act of description or transcription. A card - write Deleuze/Gauttari: "ne reproduit pas un inconscient fermé sur lui-même, elle le construit. Elle concourt à la connexion des champs, au déblocage des corps sans organes, à leur ouverture maximum sur un plan de consistance. Elle fait elle-même partie du rhizome" (Mille Plateaux).
In this sense Pierre Ndoki's project African Audio Documents delivers a complex audio-haptico-spiritual-fictional cartography of Africa - no more, no less. It is an intriguing complex of real facts from the most recent entanglement of African-French and African history, feverish dreams of somber continents, and subtle audio-poetic-reflections about the nature and conditions of minimal electro-acoustic soundworlds.
Ndoki's soundcards open up immense and unheard of possibilities of immobile voyages. His soundcards let secrets travels through the labyrinths of your cochlea supported by uncertain and risky "musical" forms and frequencies. "Voyage sur la place, c'est le nom de toutes le intensités, même si elles se developpent aussi en extension. Penser, c'est voyager (...) Voyager en lisse c'est tout un devenir, et encore un devenir difficile, incertain." (Mille Plateaux).
During the writing of this review Pierre Ndoki was so kind to provide me with the three subsequent releases of his immense project African-Audio-Documents entitled "Cellule Africaine" (AAD02, CD-r, 40 min.), "Hermetica"(AAD05, Mini-CD-r, 10 min. ) and "Loi fondamentale" (AAD04, CD-r, 50 min.).The spectrum goes from raw analogue HNW ("Cellule Africaine"), to an intricate Audio-Documentary-Sound-Collage ("Hermetica") or fantastic Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism ("Loi fondamentale").
Since this blog is a voice for the singular and the unique, it would be a violation of my own working principles to treat these three releases in an overhasted manner. Each of these releases would deserve an attentive listener and a different review. As you can see Effacer le tableau is the starting point of one of the most interesting, inventive, fascinating and conceptually thick and strong projects in HNW. It is a strong recabling of Electro-Acoustic-Minimalism(s) with other Avantgarde-Sound-Art-Formats. It will be surprising and rewarding to watch this rhizome grow over the next years ! A quote from the first e-mail Ndoki sent me, gives a good summary of his ideas:
"I have ties to the African Continent and as time went by I found out that HNW was the best way for me to express the different thoughts and emotions that arose in me when confronted to the violent magic of Africa."
(10/10 Admiration-Points)
(written by S.K.G., XI-XII.2013)
African Audio Documents
Effacer le tableau
(AAD01, CD-r, XI/2013)
Effacer le tableau
(AAD01, CD-r, XI/2013)
Highest possible recommendation !
