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Elements 56: Barium

Posted on 20/01/2023 by admin07/09/2023

The yellow-colored layer was used to simulate a kind of Brownian motion bass register, in which many possibilities can be heard simultaneously. Going far beyond the 1950’s and 60’s deterministic avant-garde experiments by Xenakis, this is a true music of possibilities and probabilities, especially in the sense that it plays with the probability an attentive listener will hear or not hear certain phenomena.
One of the phenomena one can possibly hear is a very fast tempo driving the music in an almost free-jazz forward motion, not arising from bass progressions nor percussive sounds, but from the structured chaos of the interacting registers, which are polyphonically tied together. All in all the music of Barium yields an extremely intense listening experience. Despite the space it also offers, the listener can be overwhelmed by the stream of sound. As to the space one hears enveloping the sound: in the production of this work no added reverb at all was used, space was created with polyphonic and micro-canonic means.

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Elements 4: Beryllium

Posted on 16/01/2023 by admin07/09/2023

The music of Beryllium is a free pantonal polyphony of registers rather than of pitches or linear melodies. Registers used include the extremes, and extend far beyond the instrumentally feasible – a true electronic music therefore. One can clearly discern the references to outer space.
Whereas the music of Calcium (an important organic chemical component) is very much a musica humana instrumentalis by virtue of its registers and sounds, Beryllium (not part of vital organic chemistry) is represented by an opposite musical approach, much more abstract, and not resembling human instrumental music at all.
With the extensive presence of a variety of musical events in extreme registers, both high and low (the composer used 9 such distinct registers xtreme hi – very hi – hi – hi mid – mid – lo mid – lo – very lo – xtreme lo, the outer 4 of which are not found in instrumental music), in a way this music represents the emancipation of timbre to tone.

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Elements 38: Strontium

Posted on 11/01/2023 by admin07/09/2023

The challenge with innovative contemporary music made for listening per se such as this album, lies in a challenge to connect in a free way, and go through the steps of open perception and appreciation individually, without recipe, without a priori dos and don’ts, without expectations but with memories, with a sense of exploration as in starting a new novel or unknown movie without spoilers:
1. Observe – hear everything, don’t be distracted, be aware of what happens in the various registers of time, tone, timbre, space, and volume (the range of each is much larger than with instrumental music): try to imprint what you hear into memory, ask yourself what is it objectively that I heard?
2. Evaluate – can you perceive every form distinctly enough, some things may be harder to hear, or are sounds that affect you emotionally or even physically: observe and evaluate the effect of it.
3. Interpret – observe your mind creating associations of its own: they are yours and not in the music itself yet are created by the music in you personally.

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Elements 12: Magnesium

Posted on 28/12/2022 by admin07/09/2023

The meaning of the term electronic music has changed dramatically since modern composers started to work with electronic equipment in radio studios after the second world war. In the 50’s and 60’s of the 20th century it meant mostly avant-garde esthetics by an elite group of mostly male composers making the headlines for this at the time niche medium. Today the term changed meaning but at the same time its history is in the process of being rewritten as more and more female composers are being credited for having played a defining role in the development of the medium. In 2021 the acclaimed documentary film called Sisters with Transistors was released, it demonstrated this process for a larger than specialist audience. One can also conclude that on the whole and over time the term electronic music defines a medium, not a style.

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Elements 20: Calcium

Posted on 20/12/2022 by admin07/09/2023

In 2365 an obscure recording and score were found in a cave in the Sierra Nevada. The composition was titled “100+ Recorders and 4 Organs (2022)”, it does not appear in any surviving catalogue of the digital era. Purportedly performed and recorded in the Granada cathedral nearby, two portative organs were added to the two positive organs already present. One can only speculate if that many recorder players participated, or that perhaps the audience were handed out flutes to participate? The work does give the impression of some kind of ritual.

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Elements 15: Phosphorus

Posted on 14/12/2022 by admin07/09/2023

A reflection of and on the volatile basic nature of the element Phosphorus can be found in the sparkling and resonant distorted sounds used overall. In all three parts a variety of rhythmic elements arise and decay. In view of the overall presence of the complete spectrum of sound, this album comes close to being a kind of sculpted noise.
This has been achieved in two ways: by sculpting noise from various sources (white, pink, brown) into resonances, and by sculpting and distorting resonances and sounds into noisiness. Both latest and more traditional electronic modular technologies have been used to achieve this.
Among the inspirations for this album have been works such as Sisyphus by Pink Floyd (which was on the very first record the composer ever bought in his life), Free Form Guitar by Chicago, and the overall sound explorations of many of the later Jimi Hendrix solos. Van Dillen found works such as these to capture best the basic nature of the character of the element Phosphorus in sound.

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Dronescape 10 (Anthropocene)

Posted on 02/11/2022 by admin07/09/2023

In the music of this album, the composer imagined a sounding musical stratigraphy, with partly eroded fossil sounds of instrumental music long dead, among which are remnants of human made harmonies, encased in a matrix of eroded noise. In the course of the work, one travels as if through geological musical time, gradually meeting more and more less familiar memories, artifacts, forms and substances, preserved and left behind.

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Dronescape 6.4 (Oneirology 5)

Posted on 24/10/2022 by admin07/09/2023

This album presents a unique work for bandoneon and electronics, one of the rare few since David Tudor’s work “Bandoneon ! (a combine)” from 1966 started the genre. Vervelde compared Oneirology 5 to a cubist sculpture, like Ossip Zadkine’s “The Destroyed City” from 1953, which stands in the center of Rotterdam: from every angle it looks completely different. In the same way this music is also widely different depending on the listening, despite the fixed master version presented on this recording. All special sounds and bandoneon effects, percussive, bellows and air, rattling and cracking noises have been included. Vervelde was especially happy with how this album captured the unique tone of his bandoneon, quite different from his usual repertoire, where it figures in ensembles, not solo. In a way then, the unique character of this very special instrument was captured, but also transcended by the interactions with electronic sounds and the subtle live granular synthesis added to some bandoneon layers. Those who know the bandoneon very well will recognize all details of its unique tone and noises.

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Dronescape 9 (Matters of Life or Death)

Posted on 28/06/2022 by admin07/09/2023

The 3 tracks follow a path of reverse deconstruction and unraveling, going back to the origins of this composition, and presenting earlier stages of creation as later tracks progressively. In this way the listener is not only able to hear details that might be hard to hear in the tutti version (track 1), but also the tracks become more introvert, while striving to keep their emotional impact. Gradually the clear and concrete music of We will never forgive you merges into the slightly more abstract The song without words, which is in fact a minus-two version, to be followed by the even more abstract Planet of the Ants, connecting to the sound universe of van Dillen’s earlier Dronescapes. The title of the last track explicitly refers to Dronescape 5 – Myrmecology, this time as a planet of the ants, which may be the very thing we are currently creating and heading towards. As mammals succeeded the dinosaurs, now ants may have a good chance to succeed the mammals, once extinct. If that happens, may they thrive and develop collective intelligence instead!

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Dronescape 6.3 (Oneirology 4)

Posted on 02/06/2022 by admin07/09/2023

The making of Oneirology 4 is placed in the period of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. The two composers worked together meeting by a remote computer connection, which was a bit of a surreal situation when compared to the time before the pandemic, but people got used to a remote working, teaching, studying, and collaborating actually very soon.

The surreal element also actively inspired and influenced the making of Oneirology 4 and its basic choice to face the introspective side of the dream. The plot refers to the elements of drone and dream, those are already present in the original work and its title by van Dillen.

The development in this specific Oneirology 4 is influenced by artistic suggestions from literature and cinema, like the surrealism and the sense of estrangement of Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, or the dystopian dimension of Philip K. Dick’s novels, but also by consulted documentation on scientific research about sleep and dreams.

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Elements 2: Helium

Posted on 24/05/2022 by admin07/09/2023

Helium is the first compound element, and the first of the group called the noble gases. This name was chosen because this group (column in the periodic table) is chemically unreactive under conditions that favor human life. Since Helium was among the first-born atoms, it is very abundant in the universe. Though rare on earth, Helium’s universal abundance is second only to that of Hydrogen.
One can imagine that at the reality of a larger than primal atom, the road is open for more complex atoms, and so it was: in the heavier stars, thermonuclear fission processes produced heavier elements still. In fact, there is not a single heavier atom that was not created at some point in time in some star. All matter is stardust. All heavier atoms are the product of nuclear fission in stars.
We ourselves are the children of stars become aware.

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Elements 7: Azote

Posted on 09/05/2022 by admin07/09/2023

One of the main aims when creating Azote was to create a music in which sounds move musically, and where the pitches are not the necessarily most important sound aspects, but sound, register and dynamics are, and it was composed so that each sound has its own sense of space with it. Also sometimes these spaces move independently within the music, allowing for sounds to enter and sound in these spaces. Thus beat becomes breath, or the lack of it.
Although at first hearing it appears that rhythm is the main musical area explored, deeper listening reveals that the music is happening within the virtual spaces created by what we can call breathing rhythmic bubbles of sound.
The importance of the sense of architectural space gives Azote aspects of soundscape, but the fact that these spaces are formally treated and move about in an overall very rhythmical way, points again to a possible symphony. But these are mere words, insufficiently able and possibly obsolete to describe let alone categorize this music.

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OIJ Records

 

OIJ Records was founded July 2020. It is a record label dedicated to publishing recordings of the compositions by Oscar van Dillen.

Since its inception OIJ Records became a sublabel to Donemus records Composers’ Voice series.

Thanks to this collaboration, all albums are distributed to:

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