RABELAIS, AKIRA Eisoptrophobia (Argeiphontes) dvd 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Los Angeles' Akira Rabelais may be one of the very few programmer-musicians with the touch of a poet, bringing a labyrinthian elegance to the techniques of digital corrosion. Last year, Rabelais released the masterful "Eisoptrophobia" as a series of dreamy reinterpretations of the piano works of Satie, Bartok, and Carte. These early 20th Century compositions had been delicately distressed and filtered to the point of fragility through the convoluted digital knots and slippages of his own Argephontes Lyre program. Even at this point, Rabelais had developed an incredibly complex series of intertwining metaphors cast down from the title (eisoptrophobia is the fear of mirrors) through the romantic melodies of those piano lines and their digital recombination as an outward projection of memory, nostalgia, and oblique surrealism, that keeps true to Satie's notion of 'furniture music.'
Yet, the purely aural experience of a CD was not enough for Rabelais to explore all of the ideas he had for "Eisoptrophobia." Hence, Rabelais has now released the DVD version of the album, complete with short films to accompany his music and a collection of remixes. Rabelais explained that his incorporation of the video adds another element to the metaphoric twists of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi - the aesthetic principles of beauty found in the states of being and in the transient nature of all things being imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. The films are vignettes describing the subtle events of domesticity through light and shadow which are cast across the visage of a woman in the midst of a number of mundane actions (taking a bath, staring out the window, doing yoga, etc). The images in conjunction with the music are incredibly calming, emotionally evocative, and certainly romantic, as if Merchant-Ivory films had been directed instead by Steve McQueen (the miminalist video artist, not the actor).
The remixes -- from Frank Bretschneider (aka Komet of Raster Noton), Neina, Ekkehard Ehlers, and Darren Verhagen -- offer a much different visual direction, as they have been paired with the streaming patterns of their own soundwaves in brilliant reds and greens. Musically, they tend to eradicate the references to piano, which Rabelais had been so keen on maintaining in his own work.
The DVD of "Eisoptrophobia" is quite an interesting work, from an artist who seems to be the Pablo Neruda of glitch.
RealAudio clip: "Aposiopesis"
RealAudio clip: "Gymnopedie No.2"
RealAudio clip: "Notturno (loverly remix)"
RABELAIS, AKIRA Eisoptrophobia (self-released) cd-r 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This long out of print gem finally gets reissued, by Akira himself. It's elegantly packaged in a cardboard box and tied with twine, the disc and liner notes wrapped in a gorgeously emboidered cloth, beneath a sprig of Queen Anne's Lace. Fancy! It's a cd-r this time around, but that's made up for by the amazing packaging and a bonus track not on the original! Here's what we had to say about Eisoptrophobia before:
Not just another member of the electronica community who programs code by day and is a Mille Plateaux superstar by night, Akira Rabelais has a wonderfully romantic bone in his body that affects everything he does, including programming. If his cheerleaders are correct in their praise of his software applications, then Rabelais may in fact be programming code with the same jouissance that can be found in the magic realist writings of Borges. That's pretty heavy praise, and while we've not explored his software (the Argeiphontes Lyre -- his most notable software -- supposedly mutates pre-existing sound with subtle digital distortions and digitally knotted re-sampling techniques), his musical productions which employ his own programming creations are simply stunning. "Eisoptrophobia" is Rabelais' second album, and consists of digital re-interpretations of piano pieces by Satie, Bartok, and Carte. Fortunately, these recordings are not wildly timestretched pieces of digital destruction (i.e. Speedranch, Jansky-Noise, etc.); rather, they are incredibly spartan and dreamy. Rabelais leaves the structures of the pieces intact, at times extending into tone float drifts which merely hint at the original melody, others quietly reflect a Philip Jeck-like aura of fragile antiquity, and other resemble something far more acoustic in origin like Cage's prepared pianos. Altogether, a very successful album in terms of process, concept, and execution!