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RLW / RICHARD FRANCIS - R

Format: CD Label & Cat.Number: Auf Abwegen aatp88 Release Year: 2023 Note: many years ago RICHARD FRANCIS (ew Zealand) released as ESO STEEL a fine EP in our 7" series (DR-49, 2001) with amorphous, mysterious dronings, only 22 years later this collaboration with RLW sees the daylight, based on sessions they did in 2013 when R. FRANCIS had a scholarship in WORPSWEDE, northern Germany.. => analog and digital sounds merge, guding you through minimal landscapes of micro-noises; from two masters of 'sidetone awareness' compositions.. Price (incl. 19% VAT): €13.00 More Info "First collaboration between Ralf Wehowsky (Germany) and Richard Francis (New Zealand) On a trip from Auckland over Worpswede to Eggenstein Richard Francis visited Ralf Wehowsky on the weekend of September 28th and 29th, 2013. For the recording sessions taking place during these two days Richard used his analogue synth and electronics, while Ralf had a desktop and a laptop for producing digital electronic sounds at hand. For bridging the anatgonistic sound worlds the input of one sound system was fed with the output of the other and vice versa. For this release two of the tracks (Piece 1, Untitled 1) are presented as they were recorded, with only slight pan and volume adjustments. The third track (Piece 3) is composed of fragments of a longer improvisation, time-shifting the contributions of the two artists against each other to constitute a system of non-simultaneity. RLW/Ralf Wehowsky Ralf Wehowsky is a german experimental composer, active since the 80s (with the group p16.d4 then). his work is split between solo releases (under the moniker rlw) and collaborations, exploring all fields between media exchange and realtime presence recordings. collaboration partners include among others Lionel Marchetti, Merzbow, Jim O´Rourke, Bruce Russell, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Anla Courtis, Contrastate, Kohei Matsunaga, Annette Krebs - and Richard Francis. Richard Francis Richard Francis is a sound artist from New Zealand working with electronics and found recordings. He's released solo and collaborative albums on Senufo Editions, Entr’acte, Glistening Examples, Korm Plastics and Aufabwegen. Recent collaborators include Ralf Wehowsky, Frans De Waard, Anla Courtis, Bruce Russell, Mattin, Jason Kahn and Francisco Lopez." https://aufabwegen.bandcamp.com/album/r "In 2013, Richard Francis travelled from his hometown Auckland to Worpswede, where he was invited for a residency. He did a stop-over in various places to work, such as Worm (Rotterdam), Extrapool (Nijmegen), and the German town of Eggenstein, where he met Ralf Wehowsky, also known as RLW. They spend two days together recording music. Francis, at the time, had a small mobile modular synthesizer, some electronics, and RLW behind his desktop and laptop. Both systems were connected via in- and outputs. Of the three pieces, the two longer ones were recorded in September 2013, and I assume they also mixed these at the same time; perhaps we could see this as live-in-the-studio music. The third piece, 'Piece 3', is a recomposition by RLW, using the original recordings from 2013. As I hear the two longer pieces, I wonder whether that live-in studio thing results from extensive editing and mixing of an improvised recording. In all honesty, I couldn't say which it is. It has that complexity that we know from RLW, the aspect of multi-layered sound, the collage approach we know from musique concrète, a world of music to which RLW owes much. Francis modular electronics move around like snowflakes, like corroded spaceships, or simply recall what we call 'early electronics'. The collage principles are no strangers to both men, although more applied by RLW than Francis (certainly in recent times), and it takes the material all over the place. The rusty spaceship and explosions of dark matter cause massive disruption, as noise isn't kept out of the equation. These two long pieces make up for a bumpy ride, neatly going all over the place, from strict noise to sheer silence, from densely orchestrated nightmares to single lines floating about. In the 2020 rework of the source material, some of the density of the 2013 material disappears, and it all becomes an opener. Here the music becomes almost like a cosmic synthesizer scape or something working with sine waves. I was surprised this piece was the opener of the CD, but because it's over seven minutes and much shorter than the other two, the spaciousness of this piece works very well as an introduction to what's coming. In my Thursday Afternoon Talk (link below), Jos Smolders and I talk about a previous RLW release, 'Satanic Inventions' (Vital Weekly 1365) and I mention that RLW doesn't seem too prolific in recent years. My mistake: take a look at his releases on Discogs and you'll see otherwise." [FdW / Vital weekly]