"The four pieces on the CD cover a broad time span. The first piece, which is the most recent, is a clear example of the kind of entwinement between technologies, affect, space and listening that I’ve been working on for a while. This piece plays with the role of different conditions of sound production in shaping the way we pay attention to sound - how we engage in listening to it. In its live version the piece involves other layers which are not present in the recording. This entails both the synchronisation (and non-synchronisation) between the actions of the players and what is heard (produced at points by a digital soundtrack and at points by a tape machine which is operated by a performer on stage)., As well as the material nuances imprinted on the sound by the use of three different stereo set-ups. Each of these three stereo layers diverge in dimension and placement in relation to the audience, and thus bear spatial and material qualities which are inherent in the ways in which we are exposed to sound in our media-saturated environment. The title of the piece is not meant as a statement of purpose, but rather as a question. The aim is to prompt an instability in the ways in which the sound of music triggers a seemingly imaginary realm and to problematise the role of both audio and instrumental tools in informing this process.
‘El Mismo’ can be located along the same path. It deals with the unstable identity of the piano sound as technologies of recording and reproduction have transformed and proliferated what the sound of the piano can be. ‘Disyunción’ does not use any audio technology, but it aso prompts questions concerning our audible engagement with the timbral/material indentity of an instrument and how this unfolds within the performance of memory.
The last and oldest piece - ‘Cuando ya no importe’, from 2005 - can be located at the beginning of an exploration of the material aspects of listening and a fascination with the subtle transformations of the everydaythat I thought Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti - to whom the piece is dedicated - explores in his texts. What probably captivated me in his writing is the wayminimal gestures of language subtly put into question the identity of what we perceive as the real." - Gabriel Paiuk