Martin Kay "Courtyards" Herbal 1601

[gohleekwang]

Dear Friends,

We are happy to announce our new release of 2016!

Martin Kay Courtyards Herbal 1601
http://herbalinternational.blogspot.com ... yards.html


Tracklist
01. 2 to 8
02. Allée du Père Julien Dhuit : Rue des Envierges, Paris
03. 64 Rue Archereau, 75019 Paris
04. 9 Rue Claude Monet, 93400 Saint-Ouen
05. 4 Rue Soleillet, 75020 Paris
06. 77 Rue de l'Ourcq, 75019 Paris
07. 83 Rue de Bagnolet, 75020 Paris
08. 40 Rue des Amandiers, 75020
09. 8 to 2

recorded during the summer of 2013
mixed and arranged throughout 2014 / 2015

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
60 minutes+
Release date: February 2016
12 Euros + shipping

More details below.

glk / Herbal

Note
This Courtyards project focuses on the intimate and visceral symphony of domestic activity reverberating throughout a variety of shared courtyard spaces in Paris. The different locations range from classic apartment buildings to modern project-housing estates – with each courtyard possessing a variety of unique architectural qualities that offer clear conditions to experience the delicate sounds of domestic apartment living. These qualities can also be seen to provide each space with a distinct acoustic characteristic that is often not consciously acknowledged, but which helps to form a social dynamic within an apartment complex, and a sense of place, belonging and home amongst its residents.
Martin Kay 2016

http://www.mountainblack.net

SPECIAL THANKS TO ERIC LA CASA,
WHOSE GUIDANCE AND CRITICAL EAR MADE THIS PROJECT POSSIBLE.

Artwork BY Heesun CHOI

Related resources
Musically connected
Eric La Casa "SOUNDTRACKS"
Jean-Luc Guionnet "Lac (Lake)"
Gregory Büttner "Pochen - Oder: mit nachschleifendem Zwirnsfaden die Treppe hinunterkollern"
Rodolphe Alexis | Stéphane Rives "Winds Doors Poplars"
Eric La Casa | Cédric Peyronnet "Zones Portuaires"
murmer "frame work 1 - 4"
Battus | Marchetti | Petit "La Vie Dans Les Bois"
Eric La Casa "W2 [1998-2008]"
Eric Cordier | Seijiro Murayama "Nuit"
Lasse-Marc Riek "Harbour"
Eric La Casa | Cédric Peyronnet "La Creuse"
Eric Cordier "Osorezan [Selected Field Recording 1993-2006]"

[gohleekwang]

Vital Weekly
All the way from Melbourne hails Martin Kay, who sometimes worked as Mountain Black (see Vital Weekly 897) and sometimes under his own name (see Vital Weekly 958) but in both instances he works extensively with field recordings with however as Mountain Black with some extra computer processing afterwards. Here however there is no computer processing going on as 'Courtyards' is all about recordings made in shared courtyard spaces in Paris, both the classic spaces but also the modern-housing estates, and each such space is like a sound box in itself, resonating sound against all sides. Seven of the nine pieces are recorded in a single location, and the beginning and closing pieces are the shortest ones, summing up all these pieces together. This is a very straightforward work of field recordings. It seems like they have been culled out of a longer recording, straight like that, 'these ten minutes' will do, but I doubt that is the case. I think this is all the work of precise editing and sticking sounds together to create an aural image of a place. What is even more curious is that in some of these pieces not a lot seems to be happening. At one point I even assumed the CD was finished and I seemed to be in the middle of a piece (I also check the cables of my equipment). It's that what makes this CD quite good, the sheer variety in approaches; the ultra quietness of some of these pieces and the more present approach. Just, as I would assume, life in different courtyards would be in a big city like Paris. For anyone who visited the city (and who hasn't?) this is fine reminder of how quiet and how loud such a city could be.
- Frans De Waard -

http://herbalinternational.blogspot.my/ ... yards.html

[gohleekwang]

Textura
Can't afford a trip to Paris? For an extremely modest sum, you can at least visit many of its courtyards via the latest work by Australian phonographer Martin Kay, which presents an hour's worth of field recordings captured at shared spaces in the city. Recorded during the summer of 2013, Courtyards' sounds will resonate immediately with those who've walked Paris's streets, breathed its air, and absorbed the speech interactions of adults and children alike. In these settings, sounds of kids running and playing and domestic activity abound, each piece a mini-portrait of a particular space within the city; Kay's even used actual addresses as titles, just in case you feel inclined to visit the place yourself.
Don't think that one courtyard's the same as another, by the way. As Kay's recording shows, some are noisy and boisterous (“40 Rue des Amandiers, 75020”), others sedate and subdued (“83 Rue de Bagnolet, 75020 Paris”), and a pretty strong impression of the social dynamics within the different neighbourhoods emerges as the release progresses. By Kay's own description, his sound works are “constructed primarily from un-mixed and un-edited environmental sound recordings,” so the field recordings are generally presented in a raw and untainted form. Kay, in other words, doesn't treat the field recording as an element to be added to with an instrument or transformed in some radical manner. For him, the details that emerge within the field recording—traffic noise, a siren, a baby burbling, a flute-player practicing, people talking and laughing—are, it seems, enough.
There is one unusual thing about this otherwise straightforward recording (at least the digital version sent to me): the inclusion of a protracted gap of silence between the tracks. Such breaks certainly do accentuate the contrast between the high level of activity in the setting proper and the silence that follows, but they do tend be longer than necessary (often about a minute).

[gohleekwang]

Not often our release received review in Japanese, here is the bit of the most recent one. For those who cannot understand Japanese (including us from Herbal HQ), it say something really good about the release

Sound Note
パリなどの近代的なマンションや古典的なアパートや集合住宅にある「中庭」のサウンドスケープを録音したフィールドレコーディング作品。ごく普通の光景／音響が録音され編集されていくのだが、その微細かつ大胆な編集／構成によって、住宅環境における社会／環境の音響生成を感じさせてくれる作品である。聴いていると時間の流れが変わっていくような感覚も覚える。リリースはマレーシアのレーベル〈Herbal Internationa〉から（http://herbalinternational.blogspot.com ... rtin-kay-c…）。同レーベルはRoel Meelkop、Jason Kahn、Machinefabriekなどの作品もリリースしている。

http://herbalinternational.blogspot.com ... yards.html