Jonas R Kirkegaard is a danish master student of electronic music who released Quiet Works for Cello & Commodore 64. It is a memory-stick housed in a small wooden box in an edition of 100. Thanks to the kind Jacob Sikker Remin (check his works!) I got a copy before Kirkegaard temporarily migrated to Uganda. From the memory stick:
“The cello and the commodore 64 are old and significant instruments, each in their own tradition, and they carry a lot of historical and musical references and a great heritage with them. In this project they are presented in slow, simple compositions, with a minimum of post editing and no spectacular performances by instrumentalists. Instead they are merely to be perceived together as very important, musical objects without specific regards to traditions, conventions and technical achievements.”
This is the opposite to the intricate sequencing and programming that follows the dominant perspective of soundchips as limited materials that should do new, spectacular things. Programmed in BASIC, these songs are based on the reiteration of long sounds and notes – something that might look very empty in a tracker. For many tracker-composers (including myself), empty spaces create an itch to “do something” – tapping in to a maximalist form of chipmusic where quantity sometimes gains primacy over quality.
These compositions are minimalist, even more so than the related works of Tristan Perich. Both puts attention to materiality by accepting that the music is determined by technology. Kirkegaard performs these works very quietly, which further moves the “musical form” towards the background.
At first listen it felt a bit pretentious, but as the concept sunk in, I started to like it a lot. It is a form of combination of ambient and noise, and the cello connects it to ‘classical music‘. The technology is just “doing its thing”. Albeit controlled by humans, there is much rooms for SID-artifacts in Kirkegaard’s BASIC-programming. Und das ist gut!
August 22, 2009 at 3:24 pm |
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August 24, 2009 at 7:37 pm |
[…] loops for 3 minutes in the demo without getting boring. It’s a spacious little composition, minimalistic and ambient-ish. All of this raises questions about what constitutes a song, and what the […]
August 26, 2009 at 11:51 pm |
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November 23, 2009 at 4:24 pm |
Thank you very much for the kind words on this release… I wonder how you found out about it? I did absolutely nothing to promote it. Roar and I only played two almost unnoticed concerts in Denmark, last spring.
All the best!
Jonas R. Kirkegaard
November 24, 2009 at 1:05 pm |
Hey Jonas, I found out about it through Jacob Sikker Remin, who I believe was in touch with you about it aswell. And you know.. in these days of Facebook, enthusiasts and electricity, promotion is not necessary. :D