#Victor Meertens

[aktionpak]

I'm a few Werner Durand albums deep for the evening - this particular piece somehow presents as so much of the best Indian classic music. On purpose? A 17 minute call to sleep or meditation before three more similarly extended who knows what. When money stops feeling so oppressive, this is a double LP i would throw my labour around to own.

[dustedmagazine]

Werner Durand with Amelia Cuni and Victor Meertens — Processions (Besom Presse)

Photo by Ira Landgarten

processions by werner durand with amelia cuni and victor meertens

Besom Presse is a new label based in Los Angeles that seems to be tuned in to the vibrations of healing drones. The imprint is off to a strong start with Processions, a four-sided deep dive into the sound world of Werner Durand, Amelia Cuni and Victor Meertens.  

Like any other musical device, drone can be used for good or for ill. In lazy hands, it’s an easy way to fill up sonic space. But if you pick the right frequencies and durations and calibrate them to the space in which they’re heard, there’s nothing more transportational. Werner Durand has done the necessary homework to make continuous sound that takes you somewhere else. The Austrian multi-instrumentalist’s studied awareness of tuning systems has made him a preferred partner of just intonation partisans such as Catherine Christer Hennix and Arnold Dreyblatt. His curiosity about traditional music from around the globe informs a sense that drones aren’t just for filling space, but facilitating ceremonial and meditative experiences that make something essential and connective happen both within and between people. While you’ll hear Indian and other Asian influences, especially when he works with his long-term sound partner, Italian dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni, he does not merely copy what others have done. In fact, some of his tools are one of a kind originals; in addition to oscillators, bi (a Vietnamese reed instrument) and saxophone, he makes his own instruments out of PVC tubes.

Processions collects four pieces of music made between 2012 and 2016. Besides Cuni and Durand, Australian polymath Victor Meertens plays hammered guitar on every track. Tuned to certain prime numbers (2, 3, and 5 on one LP; 2, 3 and 13 on the other) which avoid the clashing intervals that result when one plays open strings in conventional equal temperament, his percussive attack generates a ringing glow that brings to mind early Sonic Youth, only turned way, way down. Cuni and Durand, assisted by a few other players on trumpet, sarod, and mirliton (medieval kazoo), switch between instruments and voice. Each piece is made from layers of low gong tolls, shimmering electronics, long reed tones, and curling string and vocal lines that cohere into a decisive statement that whatever you are doing, and wherever your mind is at, can wait while you retune. The way that Cuni’s voice rises above humid strata of strings and electronic tones makes “Caressing the Air” an apt early morning raga. What follows is more bracing and immersive. The title tune’s contrast of burrowing trumpet and massed reeds, and “Sandal’s” insistent strums and detonating gong beats, make them much more dizzying affairs.  make “Sandal” the soundtrack to your mid-day constitutional. Sparser, slower, and spiked with dissonantly gargling horns, “Khus” is the post-sunset sound that primes you for the silence to come. Each side is, in its own way, quite compelling. This music is not an invitation to merely escape, but an auditory reframing of whatever commotion is going around you as the real distraction.  

Bill Meyer

[tomoyauesaka]

9/28! 即興のイベントです！メルボルンからのトリオと対バンで谷町四丁目のマルコノスタルジーです。 2018.9.28 (fri) ☆The Charles Ives Singers; ・Victor Meertens [goataphone,　electronics, voice, inspiration] ・Alexis Ensor [monostring,discrete objects, voice] ・David Palliser [saxophone, electronics, voice,random percussion］ from メルボルンMelbourne ☆向井千惠 MUKAI Chie [二胡er-hu,voice,dance] ☆千野秀一 CHINO Syuichi [piano] ☆宮本 隆 MIYAMOTO Takashi [bass] ☆上坂朋也UESAKA Tomoya [Percussion] open 19:00 / start 19:30 adv 2000yen / door 2300yen @マルコ ノスタルジ Marco Nostalgy 大阪市中央区内本町1-3-9 B1-2 地下一階奥 tel 06-6147-9733 地下鉄谷町線「谷町4丁目」より3分 3 minutes from osaka metro “Tanimachi yonchome” ＊中津より移転しました。 #improvisation #electric #electricjazz #jazz #percussion #drum #flyer #instagood #melbourne #australia (Marco Nostalgy - マルコノスタルジ　ライブ/スタジオ) https://www.instagram.com/p/BnTFnwhAuZX/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=12lnor2l4bfjt