dave phillips & cornelia hesse-honegger - mutations

LP, 2010, Ini Itu, Schaerbeek.   Sold Out

Dp ini itu

artwork by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, mastered by James Plotkin



REVIEWS

HEAVY field recording/manipulation of Thai and Vietnamese sound sources by Fear of God’s Dave Phillips, augmented by scientific illustrations of mutated insects by artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger. Her work graces the cover art, labels, and full-color plate within, and gives a striking but a bit too obvious of a meaning behind Phillips’ sound collage, which is why you probably stepped up in the first place. Sounds of insects, nature, voices and machinery are slowed down, phased heavily, and stretched into ominous tones that somewhat remind of Basil Kirchin’s groundbreaking Worlds Within Worlds albums from the early ‘70s, though the passage of time and accrual of experience within the horrors of society/the world/popular culture has brought the dread down hard. Phillips takes this experience and places it, boot-like, directly upon the listener’s throat, the menace within these sounds growing steadily as the sides grind on. Outstanding, oppressive, hot work from both science and creation. Edition of 250 numbered copies.

(Doug Mosurock, still-single.tumblr.com)

Belgium’s Ini.Itu label slowly builds a small catalogue of LP sized vinyl, always in an edition of 250 copies and always dealing with sounds from the far East, usually Indonesia, but in the case of Dave Phillips, field recordings from Thailand and Vietnam. Hesse-Honegger is a visual artist who did the cover and the insert that comes with the record. Phillips created the music solely from field recordings and has crafted two pieces, one per side, of great beauty. Somehow I think its a bit unlike his previous work. The sound is still quite upfront and present, like in much of his work, but there is not sense of rapid sound collaging and montage. The collage happens in the form of using many layers of sound, in which sounds are moved in and out of the mix. Lots of animal sounds, but also, perhaps, those of human activity. To that it seems Phillips also a bit of electronics, to juxtapose certain elements or to craft a drone like element that occurs at irregular intervals. An excellent, well crafted album of nicely treated field recordings.

(Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly, Issue 759)

«Mutations» - необычный альянс известного музыканта Дейва Филлипса и швейцарской ученой дамы Корнелии Хессе-Хонеггер, которая посвятила жизнь изучению насекомых, графическим работам (они представлены в оформлении пластинки) и исследованию процессов мутации, для чего посещала такие места, как Чернобыль. При этом не ясно, какова роль Корнелии в процессе создания музыки, судя по всему, оба трека были созданы Филлипсом единолично, и в основу их он положил полевые записи, сделанные в Тайланде и во Вьетнаме, а также фирменную шумовую электронику. Конечно же, увидев обложку с мухами дрозофилами, одна из которых подверглась мутации, а другая – нет, ожидаешь услышать первым делом насекомых. Однако записи из джунглей наполнены шумом деревьев, ветра и криками животных, летающей и ползающей мелюзге отведено не очень много места, но свои голоса в эту бесконечную симфонию жизни насекомые, как и заведено в природе, вносят. Одна сторона пластинки, если довериться ощущениям от прослушивания, посвящена дню, другая, соответственно, ночи. Как и положено, ночь – это время тревожной тишины, странных, пугающих шорохов и незнакомых голосов, на которые наложены акустические следы человеческой активности, как то – шаги, грохот деревянных предметов и голоса. Ну а день – это буйство жизни, многоголосие лесных обитателей, борьба за жизнь, правда, опять же не лишенная человеческих следов. Если Хессе-Хонеггер интересует мутация видов и отдельных особей, то Дейв старательно исследует мутации звуков, которые сам и провоцирует, обрабатывая первичный поток информации, накладывая разные кусочки исходных записей друг на друга, смешивая их, создавая петли и добавляя утробный, шершавый гул, приправленный высокими частотами. Грохот и яростный напор сменяется обманчивой тишиной, крики животных, пройдя через фильтры, превращаются в бормотание неведомых существ, встречи с которыми очень хочешь избежать, а электроника добавляет хаос и дисгармонию. В определенный момент пробуждающиеся древние инстинкты начинают подавать тревожные сигналы сознанию, которое подвергается безостановочному давлению шумового потока, и тогда становится неуютно, что характерно для многих работ Филлипса. Так что не стоит себя готовить к прослушиванию «обычных» полевых записей – перед нами сложный коллаж, взгляд на экзотическую природу через призму индустриального мировоззрения, давшего привычку вызывать у слушателя безотчетное напряжение, испуг и прочие сильные переживания, которые помогут запомнить эту запись надолго.

(Сергей Сергеевич, maeror3.livejournal.com/191022.html)

Cela n’aurait pu être qu’un disque d’exotica conçu à partir de field recordings qu’on aurait rien eu à redire. Cependant, l’approche proposée par Dave Phillips (Fear of God, Ohne) et Cornelia Hesse-Honegger se veut un peu plus brutale. Ce n’est pas pour rien que ce disque s’appelle Mutations. Construit autour de sonorités récoltées en Thaïlande et au Vietnam entre 1994 et 2007, le duo a fait plus que les associer et les traiter électroniquement. Ils les ont déformé, maltraité, créant des distortions diverses. Nous sommes donc très loin d’une musique appaisante et des idées toutes faites que l’on se fait sur le genre. Ici nous sommes dans le noise, une forme abrupte et frontale qui désacralise une musique que l’on sait trop sereine. Nous avons donc bien affaire avec une mutation mais pas de celle que l’on attend forcémment. On revient à un état sauvage, qui se transforme ou plutôt se déforme comme si les sons de la nature collectés se noyaient dans une entreprise de démolition bruitiste. Insectes et oiseaux exotiques semblent se fondre dans cet amas post-industriel mais l’expérience est parfois difficile à suivre. Il faut donc s’accrocher, combattre sa répugnance au bruit et prendre ce Mutations comme du field-recordings extrêmen qui bouscule les habitudes. En un sens, c’est quelque peu salvateur. On sort ainsi du flon-flon trop serein dans lequel on était trop souvent plongé. Il serait facile d’interpréter ce disque comme une réaction épidermique aux dogmes du field-recordings. En soit, Mutations n’est pas une provocation bruitiste à la Whitehouse. Bien au contraire, ce disque se révèle comme une expérience afin d’emprunter des chemins différents et s’offrir des perspectives nouvelles. De plus, Mutations n’est pas dans un affrontement total. Malgré ses penchants noise, ce disque reste tout en nuances et ces subtilités ne se révèlent à nous grâce à une écoute attentif et studieuse. C’est là que le sens du titre de l’album devient évident. Nous n’avons pas affaire à une mutation unique et stérile mais à «des» mutations qui, lorqu’elles entrent en contact, en provoquent de nouvelles. D’où cette impression de foisonnement, de superposition sonore qui nous laisse ce sentiment de bruit incontrolé. Ainsi, Mutations atteint son but et nous dévoile une musique qui sort des sentiers battus.

(Fabien, Liability Webzine)

Le camion que l’on entend passer est un poids-lourd chargés d’insectes. Ces créatures sont l’œuvre du diable – un diable né d’une collaboration entre une scientifique qui rapporte les mutations subies par des insectes touchés par le nuage radioactif de Tchernobyl (Cornelia Hesse-Honegger) et un ex-musicien de grindcore (Dave Phillips).
Sous chacune des carapaces, ce n’est pas un mais plusieurs cœurs qui battent. En plus de cela, les insectes crissent et leurs accouplements (qui sont en fait ceux de field recordings d’Asie ou de Suisse) engendrent d’autres bêtes mutantes. Tous ces bruits sont peut-être responsables de l’accident. Le camion s’est renversé sur la chaussée et il déverse sa cargaison. Les monstres se grimpent les uns sur les autres, lentement ils quittent le navire, lentement. Mais l’un d’entre eux vient de passer sous votre porte.

(Héctor Cabrero, Le Son du Grisli)

Sound sculptor Dave Phillips and visual artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger pool their talents for the thirty-seven-minute vinyl release Mutations (available in 250 hand-numbered copies). Though the Zürich, Switzerland-based Phillips has a background in grindcore, doom-metal, and other radical sound ventures, his recent work has focused more on field recordings of animal sounds, while Hesse-Honegger, a scientific illustrator for twenty-five years at the University of Zürich, has been painting leaf bugs for many decades, and since the Chernobyl explosion, has been studying the mutated morphology of insects found in radioactive regions. As a collaborative project, Mutations would appear, then, to be a natural fit for both of them. Hesse-Honegger’s cover and insert illustrations depict the mutated and normal heads and bodies of flies and damsel bugs, the renderings reflecting her conviction (supported by formal study) that normally working nuclear power plants produce deformities in insects. Phillips, who created his two long-form settings from source material recorded in Thailand and Vietnam between 1994 and 2007, blends, stretches, smears, and layers the sounds into sprawling masses of vertiginous and hallucinatory design. Following a scene-setting shriek, the album’s first side explores a micro-sound jungle of magnified insectoid thrum, bird chatter, animal croak, and creeping noctural atmosphere—a disorienting landscape drowning in detail. Midway through, an industrial drone suggests the presence of some lost tribe before the increasingly turbulent sound mass swells to a feverish climax that evokes the venomous attack of a prototypical noise artist until an abrupt flameout transpires. The nightmare carries over to the second side where the presence of wildlife abounds, whether it be the chattering clicks of an insect masticating or the swoop of animal cries. The disturbing ambiance grows when radio interference and churning machine noises join in, and the gradual increase in disorientation exemplified by side one’s material repeats itself in slightly different form. Describing Mutations, as ini.itu does, “a lysergic trip to the heart of darkness,” turns out to be a succinct characterization.

(textura.org/reviews/phillips_hessehonegger.htm)

A vinyl LP, composed by Dave Phillips and illustrated by Cornelia Hesse-Honegger. If we all know Dave Phillips (look into the catalog if you need), Cornelia Hesse-Honegger is a new name. She is a scientific illustrator and science artist, was born in 1944 in Zürich, Switzerland. For 25 years she worked as a scientific illustrator for the scientific department of the natural history museum at the university of Zürich. Since 1969 she has collected and painted with painstaking detail leaf bugs, heteroptera. Since the summer of 1987, following the Chernobyl explosion, she has been studying the mutated morphology of insects found in the regions hit by the radioactive cloud, starting with the Ticino region, in the southern part of Switzerland. The cover depicts a mutated and a normal looking head of drosophila subobscura. All original source material used for the pieces on this record was recorded out in various places in Thailand and in Vietnam between 1994 and 2007. These pieces can be considered as articulations between the constructed works of Dave Phillips (such as. ‘TheyLive’) and his pure field recordings pieces (‘Frogs Rain’, ‘Ghi Am Viet Nam’). He is here indeed juxtaposing, layering, condensing, stretching, distorting, - in one word mutating - these sounds into balanced progressions, punctuations and dense climaxes which generate an overwhelming and sometimes uneasy environment. “Mutations” is an hallucinatory cinéma pour l’oreille, unsettling, brooding, ominous, but always restrained, controlled. The sprawling ebb and flow, the unsettling and recuring waves of animal activity, lead you progressively closer to the horror. “Mutations” is a lysergic trip to the heart of darkness, and a warning about the devastation at work. The LP was mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, OLD) in Philadelphia. 250 copies, hand numbered, includes 2 hi-quality printed inserts.

(https://www.soundohm.com/product/mutations)

Nice concept this. Cornelia Hesse-Honegger is a Swiss scientific illustrator who, for the last 25 years, has studied mutations in insects caused by the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. Her detailed drawings of deformed bugs decorate the sleeve and insert of this handsome LP with gelid staring eyes, antennae and thick, black bristles. The music is built from field recordings of insects, processed, mutated – or as Hesse-Honegger would have it “morphologically disturbed” – by Dave Phillips. As you’d expect from this Schimpfluch-Gruppe-affiliated former grindcore brute, this is no Amazon-Ambient chillout zone: everything’s amped high, the creatures scream from the speakers, and sudden jumpcuts between textures give the record a jagged, unsettled rhythm. It’s nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ - violent, alien, possibly grudge-bearing.

(Nick Richardson, The Wire, Issue 324, February 2011)

Ini Itu is een ons nog vrij onbekend label, opgericht in Jakarta in 2008 en sinds enige tijd gevestigd in de Brusselse buitenwijken van Schaarbeek. Het doel van het label; het uitbrengen van specialere geluidsstructuren op vinyl LP’s in gelimiteerde oplages van 250 stuks. Geen cd’s, mp3‘s of andere vorm van duplicatie dus en daarmee weten we direct dat we te maken hebben met gepassioneerde mensen met een innige liefde voor de zwarte groef. […] Dave Phillips enCornelia Hesse-Honegger slaan de handen ineen voor ‘Mutations’, de ene als geluidsartiest, de andere als visueel artieste. Het concept hier zijn de onnatuurlijke mutaties van gevleugelde insecten ten gevolge van de Chernobyl kernramp. Geluidsopnames van insecten in Zwitserland, Thailand en Vietnam zijn in collagevorm samengesteld en aangevuld met donkere tonen en drones. Insectenelectronica dus en bij audiofielen zal het water nu wel in mond beginnen te lopen. Het is een intrigerende geluidstrip van gemuteerde geluiden uit de natuur waar onheilspellende sferen de boventoon voeren. De wereld van insecten is en klinkt onmenselijk, dat is zeker. Geen lol maar wel sterke geluiden. Een goed detail; beide platen werden gemastered door James Plotkin. Ini Itu heeft ons goed wakkergeschud en we zetten onze radar richting Schaarbeek.

(Seb Bassleer, Gonzo Circus, February 2011)

The grindcore-absurdist loopster from Switzerland takes on the entire scientific research community on this gloopy sludgefest - once it’s heard, the fields of biology and entomology can never be the same again. All the sounds were prepared by Phillips, using a bucket of field recordings fetched back by diligent workers from international locations, and by the time the final groove has spun, he has succeeded in changing the natural world into an alien, muddy swamp of disease, clouds, monsters, and gigantic frogs. This man could find neurosis in a pool of pond water, see all of humanity’s pain in the wings of a dragonfly. The very insects, frogs and birds become enemies of mankind, as sharply evidenced by the evil multi-layered croakings and buzzings that emanate from this ugly record like an ancient plague from the Biblical past. This release came out the same year as his ? CD for Heart & Crossbone, a release characterised by tremendous doubt and uncertainty which may have been related to some form of mental breakdown or severe depression, but Mutations also transmits grave sensations of pain and anxiety.

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger contributes four artworks to the release, which appear on the cover and label and as a double-sided insert. These microscopic close-ups of insect anatomy may suggest that she is someone who has looked through her microscope and seen too much, but they are scientifically accurate. She’s an outsider scientist, rejected by the established scientific community after she dared to publish the “truth” about the effects of atomic radiation in insects; she found uncomfortable evidence after researching a zone that was badly stricken by the cloud of fallout from Chernobyl. The sleeve note would like us to believe that the problem is more than just mutated insects; it seems that any literature that is critical of the harmful effects nuclear radiation is actively suppressed by the powers that be.

Whether or not you are intellectually swayed by the line of thought proposed by this release, you will be viscerally moved by the powerful sounds of Dave Phillips. The continuous thread of music builds up to a frenzy of horror and alarm, in the way that only he can achieve, making virtual organ chords out of layered samples. In this warped vision, nature is quite some way from the benign and fascinating worlds proposed by Chris Watson or Francisco López in their sonic studies. Instead, it is brutal and fierce, an agent for heat-death and extermination.

(Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector, January 2010)