Graeme Revell - Balinese Twilights

The inspiration for The Insect Musicians comes from this Oriental poetic tradition. In the West there has been the odd exwnple of nature and formalism colliding in music, e.g. "The Flight of the Bumblebee", and recently Messaien's transcriptions of bird song, rather more beautiful. But they are always perfortned on instruments of the modem orchestra, and only bear an awkward timbral relationship with the songs they would imitate.
Now, for the first time, digital technology allows the sampling and manipulation of any natural sound source. Man can now see nature in a new light, and relate to it in complementary, creative ways. The insect produces sounds which go far beyond the boundaries of natural perception: m their pitch (which is often too high); in their rhythms (which are often too fast); and in their timbres (which can be too complex).
i) Only a few of the insects are ever heard by man, and still fewer in the industrialized West. Best known, of course, are the crickets, grasshoppers, and cicadae. But a great many others produce sounds of communication and by virtue of their other activities. One of most important roles of the new technology is to bring these silent songs into the human acoustic and time scale.
ii) Furthermore, by being able to sample and use the sound itself, and variations of it, we have the possibility of the creation of new instruments, entire new orchestras of timbres.
iii) And in the microscopic analysis of the sounds and their organization (Rhythm) we find suggested new structures of musical syntax and semantics. Though it is notable that from the first listening one will notice a few greater affinity between certain ethnic ("primitive") musics and natural sonorities.
The Insect Musicians is therefore both very new and, at the same time, very old. It is nature and hyper-nature in a sort of indivisible whole. Despite the high degree of digital manipulation, all the new "instruments" are able to retain the essential character (or "Nature") of their source mtact. If the approach has been to approximate certain ethnic (including European) mstruments, it is mainly due to this "Nature" strongly suggesting it in the first place. And of course it is only one approach. It is perhaps most significant to ask how much man has in the past imitated these natural sonorities in the creation of his own instruments and musics.

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[analfrost]

this must be what adolf wolfli heard in his head... i love it!

[UntidyCat]

thanks for sharing this obscure piece!

[boomshala]

I think you mean a record he made from partitions from Adolf Woelfi. This man was mentally ill and locked in a psychiatric hostpital in Switzerland. He sais he could hear music, so he wrote the notes in the form of drawings. And build paper trumpets to play his music. Graeme Revell made a record out of the drawings, trying to interpretate the notes, and build paper trumpets that he played with another band ("Nurse with Wounds" I believe).

[zim3x]

Im looking for a song that Greame Revell maked, it's with many horns/trumpets in it. If you have any idea, please send me a personal message!

Thanks, Max.

[Unasleep]

Love it. Very other-worldly....