Thursday, October 30, 2008

Francisco López

My good friend (Mikey C) turned me on to Francisco Lopez years ago when we both went to the University of Pittsburgh. We both had radio shows on WPTS and I believe that is where he first heard of Lopez. Francisco Lopez is an avante-garde minimalist composer who uses many field recording in his works. I have three albums of his. Some may find these unlistenable, others mellowing and soothing, others confused. Many of his records come with no artwork and he often performs in total darkness with blindfolds passed out to the audience. These three albums were released on Alien 8 recordings.



Untitled #123
This was the first album that I heard from Lopez. The instrument in this album was a grain silo in Montreal that was microphoned in various ways. Over the course of one year, many artists utilized this grain silo for various projects. This album (like many of Lopez' works) utilizes silence, sub-frequencies inaudible to human ears, and sound textures to create a canvas opening itself to the listener. I once listened to this album alone in my apartment while studying. The opening few minutes are mostly silent, so I soon forgot that I was listening to an album. I suddenly was hearing a hissing noise that was becoming slowly louder. I started freaking out because I couldn't figure out what it was. I honestly thought that my stove had developed a gas leak and pulled it out to look behind the oven for a broken gas line. I was trying to smell where the gas may be leaking from. After several very nervous minutes, I remembered that I was playing a cd and soon discovered that the gas leak was just the silophone. Amazing.



Addy en el pais de las frutas y los chunches
"Addy in the land of fruit and thingymmujiggs"
This is a collection of field recordings made in Costa Rica during the rainy season of 1995. Lopez layers these landscape recordings together to create a soundscape where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This has been reported to be Lopez' favorite work he has done.


Untitled #104
This album is very different from the above, and probably the most unlistenable. Instead of using field recordings and sound textures, this album consists of layers of Metal- and when I say metal I mean death, black, doom, and dare I say new wave of british. I am not sure if he took samples of albums, created the sounds himself, or simply mic'd 3 or 4 bands playing at the same time. Harsh, but still creates swells and troughs with these tones...

2 comments:

King Fiery Jaguar Paw said...

dude-

i was halfway through downloading that silo recording when i checked yr blog. and behold! you are hookin it up big time! 2002 4evah!

mc

Borgus Weems said...

I love the silophone story.