Robert Curgenven
Working with harmonics, textures and resonance as articulated not only through instruments/objects, in space and place, but also in time and the dislocation of the remote, Curgenven's sound explores slowly shifting layers in the fabric of fields of perception. Creating vast landscapes from carefully detailed recordings through to immersive resonances via deft manipulations of sound pressure - his “old school“ background is evident in his working by hand without a computer.
Working with harmonics, textures and resonance as articulated not only through instruments/objects, in space and place, but also in time and the dislocation of the remote, Curgenven's sound explores slowly shifting layers in the fabric of fields of perception. Creating vast landscapes from carefully detailed recordings through to immersive resonances via deft manipulations of sound pressure - his “old school“ background is evident in his working by hand without a computer.
Agenesis
The sharp staccato of a cicada, stuck in a tropical stairwell, throwing its body against a fluorescent light – it keeps trying to force a solution despite it clearly not working. The submerged melodies of an 84 year old acetate echo the reflection in the play-of-light which inspired its name. A Benedictine monastery’s pipe organ in Ireland’s west sounds with and against those of a Cathedral organ pipes’ contrasting intonation at St Fin Barre’s in Ireland’s south. Voices laugh in backstreets disc…
Beyond Enclosures
On his captivating new solo album, is an Ireland-based, Australian-born Robert Curgenven - highly regarded for his majestic, coruscating pipe organ through to feedback, immersive resonances via turntables and custom-made vinyl, as well as carefully detailed field recordings, experimental turntable techniques inter-woven with piano and extended pipe organ techniques with an enveloping, often ecstatic and mystic effect recalling resonances and sound intended as a physical field of perception.The 3…
Built Through
The acoustic architecture of Robert Curgenven and Richard Chartier forms a delineation of space built through dismantling the constitution of internal and external. Beyond dividing space, creating a façade or habitable zone, the perceptibility of the surface is turned back in on itself and with it a shift in the ideological and social context of the space. A seamless integration of digital and analogue, a suffusion which creates a mutual modulation, transforming purpose chosen materials—dense, u…
Climata
Climata is a new work by composer and sound artist Robert Curgenven comprised entirely of site-specific recordings captured in 15 of James Turrell’s Skyspaces, spanning 9 countries. Each of the individual recordings, with their quiet & slowly changing microtonal interventions made in-situ, interrogate and offer a specific document of weather, location and duration framed by the architecture of the Skyspace – a frame that blurs the distinction between interiority and exteriority – while al…
They Tore The Earth And, Like A Scar, It Swallowed Them
**Translucent Red Vinyl - Visceral psychogeography of settler colonialsm via field recordings - 30+ remote areas across Australia recorded over 12 years - pipe organ, guitars, dubplates** "Rendered via field recordings gathered over 12 years in over 30 remote locations across Australia, mixed and expanded within immense, shimmering harmonics wrought via pipe organ, dubplates, guitar, bass and turntable feedback, piano, and low frequency oscillators. "Imagine you have found a new country. …
Sirene (Selected pipe organ works 1983-2014)
Drone vanguard Robert Curgenven returned to his ancestral home of Cornwall to put together the visceral, yet contemplative Siréne, a gorgeous drone works massively recommended if yr into Kevin Drumm, Eliane Radigue, Jason Lescalleet, Janek Schaefer. Mastered & Cut by Rashad Becker, Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin, April 2014.16-foot pipe organs recorded in Cornwall at the churches of St Paul (Ludgvan), St Winnow (Towednack), St Uny (Lelant), St Wyllow (Lanteglos), St Cyrus & Juliette (St Veep). Un…
Oltre
The best 12k/LINE release in ages - dark, Lynchian eroded tape-loops and analogue menace. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE! (boomkat) "The Transparence dubplate, developed at O ' in Milan, Italy, works within the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, employing the object as sound source and also sound medium, to become an instrument in its own right. Using the non-linear acoustics of the gallery at O', the dubplate was recorded, and later cut to disc in Berlin, at very low volume. This ephemeral audi…
silent landscapes
Silent Landscapes, the first volume in Recorded Fields’ “Field Recording Series”, reveals four crisp, meticulously layered vignettes composed from field recordings made throughout Australia. Somewhere between beauty and brutality, the restrained fury of this landscape becomes quietly perceptible upon the threshold of silence; creating an intense exploration of uncharted territories at the edge of human experience. This country, given voice through one of the world‘s oldest living cultures, can u…