if sound can be wrenched from context, taken from a concrete sound source and abstracted to produce the 'acousmatic experience', an experience that produces the necessary distance between listener-sound in order for the sound to be appreciated in-and-of-itself (a wild but constructive claim), then perhaps we can ditch the asphyxiating layers of reference; the pressure exerted by waves, hooks and choruses accumulated, settled into strata over a century of recordings and broadcasts. a utopian claim: let's liberate sound. fitting then that the evolution of editing, the tension in its use as abstraction mechanism/cultural positioning system, is followed through into the digital domain over the three shows. oval's insular compositions and janek schaefer's poly-vinyl tones placed into context with their concrete forefathers.

thursday 3rd april: musique concrete

at times the night is somewhat liberating - the audience placidly seated, laid out on the floor, digesting parmegiani's surround-sound trickling from eight speakers positioned centrally and in the four corners of the hall. bernard himself is sat at a disproportionately large mixing desk bang in the middle, producing an elemental earth-fire-water sound-scape that peaks during its final passage, entitled 'elastic studies'. it's here that he subtly intertwines artificial and acoustic sound, producing a tension born of our perceptive puzzlement - is that a drum-skin or a synth? - and pure sensual pleasure. a sound that's faraway, so close. canadian composer calon follows this with time well; a piece of music surpassed by its theory, its intent 'to be here, exactly', to produce a 'stillness in movement'. it sounds like cinematic swathes of electronic sound, far too much sweep and not enough absence for his zen pretensions. on occasion he comes up with irruptions of nervous energy, taut gaggles of sound, schizophonics. the most astonishing thing about french-speaking calon is that he has approached a conceptual piece on movement without a trace reference or study of bergsonian duration/systems. perhaps this can explain its ultimately unexciting nature. farmer's manual set up shop centrally again, five net-users at their laptops, muttering confusedly between them ('did you get that thing i sent through? the sound of a xerox machine puking? is it on your screen?'). obvious question, i know, but why are they here? is their setup not geared entirely towards the internet's streaming technology? what am i supposed to be looking at - the demystification of this fileshare-improv process? i guess the sound-system isn't exactly bedroom in standard but my headphones will do for this kind of thing. they bleep, grunt and crackle their way through the monitor glow - their cutting edge attitude to free-ambient music highlighting the futility of the traditional performance template, when faced with interface-based interaction between performers.

thursday 17th april: electro-instruments

janek schaefer's tri-phonic turntable is a simple but ingenious gadget, one of those 'why didn't anyone else think of that?' type things. three needles on one deck means mounting 7", 10" and 12" records simultaneously and letting the vinyl sandwich drone away. he abstracts his sound sources, usually through snail-paced rpm settings or reversing the sound. schaefer is entertaining enough, in his architect specs and wacky shirt, but the process seems to override the final piece which drones away a little limply at times. the occasional quirky record keeps things together, like a stuttering down-tuned music-box melody or two. the electronische quartet do cage's cartridge music, one of his instructional pieces. as usual, the instructions themselves are more revealing than the performed piece. the quartet are neatly dressed suits standing in a close square, fiddling with test tubes and a turntable and sounding like, well, men fiddling with test tubes and a turntable. it's a live form of musique concrete, an extension of schaeffer's ideas. applause, yawn, bring on the main act. where is the main act?

miles and hancock noticed long ago that electronics can abstract acoustic sound-sources. effects can render instruments unrecognizable. but how to abstract a digital sound source? oval (pronounced oh-vaal), for me the centre-piece of this 'cut'n'splice' series, found an answer in malfunction - joined tone in the land of wounded technology - before the obsession with click techno, glitch dub, glitch r'n'b, glitch pop pap, glitch-as-just-another-signifier came into trend. as oval, popp's pioneering compositions offer an escape route, a way out. they aspire to a place beyond 'glitch', a place shorn of signifiers: popp the romantic figure, in search of the virgin sign, a la mallarme. tonight, however, he has refused to fly anything other than lufthansa. is it the swedish hostesses, mr. popp? his british airways tickets were insufficient and his absence somewhat collapses the evening. suffice to say he is sorely missed. bristol collective socket, meanwhile, are shifted into the main hall to pump out a psychedelic audiovisual treat. mancats wander the desert, briefcases in hand, whilst a live didgeridoo challenges the laptops to step it up. they jam out pounding instrumentals with a prog-gloss, possibly the only act without a theoretical screen to hide behind, and all the better for it.

thursday 24th april: plunderphonics

the act of recycling implies an imbalance in production and consumption. thus the surfeit of pop singles, of underground 7"s, of just about any music product, overshooting the demand produced by disposable income disposed - paychecks tossed on a glut of pop junk for the pop junkie's spunk to stir. the work of art in the age of cultural overproduction can re-adjust the balance by debordian assemolage. whereas typically recycling makes useful product from spent product, plunderphonics is the art of re-appropriation in sound, the displacing of cultural co-ordinates. and if everything feels like it's subservient to the next thing, if each record seems an element in a series of n, this just confirms us as virtuoso consumers, no more, no less. thus the bootleg, the mixtape, the cut-up as both re-appropriation and pure product of our cyclic demands. under-the-counter culture as symptom of over-the-counter saturation - no better, no worse, no counter-culture, just necessary fuel for the blind momentum that plunges us into the musical after-future, the one we spend into being day after day.

rummaging around the waste-bins is a typically modernist gesture (duchamp, schwitters), whilst taking a perfectly successful product and violating it is somewhat more post-whatever. but tonight there's nothing as downright exhilarating as a kid606 mash-up, a dj rupture collision, an akufen assemolage, a john oswald flurry, nothing as satisfying as a fennesz/ehlers-like archaeology or sound history. the most striking feature of the night is the continuous stream of sound in the air: three-hours of studio outtakes playing in the ica bar. taken from the 'good vibrations' recording sessions (six-month's worth, just for the sake of a 3'35 a-side), simon jameson has compiled a take-by-take account of brian wilson's tormented path to pop immortality. this is, as the ica rightfully point out, 'taking sampling to its logical conclusion', jameson producing a psychologically penetrating, haunting work out of someone else producing a work. on the performance side of things, nicolas collins takes like cage to the radio dial and uses it as a net for broadcast recordings, improvising with whatever his receiver happens to pick up. alongside this - a fascination with letting feedback follow its own pathway, reach its own conclusion. jonathan impett's lone mute trumpet, located somewhere amongst the audience provides an acutely physical contrast, but on the whole it's all a notch below sharing a drink at the bar with brian's spectre.

headlining is people like us, vicki bennett electing again to apply her audiovisual cut-up satyr to fifties mores and the incipient electronic revolution - an easy target and oft-plumbed well for caricature and critique. witty and irreverent, her depiction of women in society and their relation to machines is entertaining and political, if not a tad obvious. landing far from heaven, the lack of stage presence and actual activity of the performer becomes symptomatic of every 'cut'n'splice' performer's grapple to find live expressions for technologically intricate setups. the same can be said for the season as a whole, with perhaps only the concrete night matching setup with concept successfully.

reviewed by anil bawa (jizz futurhythmiac carharrtheorist)