Christopher McFallChristopher McFall - Grayscale Is Failing (ca030) (June 20, 2007)

"Grayscale Is Failing" was composed from variety of digital and treated analog field recordings. The resulting compositions were conceived through a variety of computer-based manipulations. For me, this grouping of works has assumed a very visual quality, as the source recordings used to create it were procured in the metropolitan districts of Kansas City, USA during the winter of 2007. I feel that these works tend to portray a digital vision of the subtle aspects of winter in urban America; it's long nights and short days shadowed by overcast skies, giving way to portraits of dimly lit buildings and city streets that serve as a scaffolding for the continuous advance of technology, while at the same time, allowing for the mass consumption of the remnant.


Christopher McFall is a sound artist working out of Kansas City, USA.
His primary methods of working involve the use of computer-based programming techniques, which are applied to art of processing sounds from field recordings and then re-combining them in a multitrack format. The main motivation behind Christopher's workings revolve around the desire to manipulate/engineer recorded aspects of the macroscopic world around him into a microscopic mosaic.
He has released recordings previously on Con-v, Filament Recordings and Laboratoire Moderne. Additionally, Christopher is scheduled to release new work on CD-R in 2007 on Entr'acte. New netlabel releases are also scheduled for 2007 on Testube and alg-a. Previous releases by Christopher McFall may be freely downloaded from the following netlabels:
Laboratorie Moderne: http://www.earlabs.org/label/LM/LM037.asp?titleID=1837
Con-v: http://www.con-v.org/cnv25.htm
Filament Recordings: http://www.filamentrecordings.co.uk

Contact:
www.myspace.com/christophermcfall

This item is part of the collection: Clinical Archives

Author: Christopher McFall
Date: 2007-06-20
Source: Clinical Archives
Keywords: experimental; avant-garde

Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

Notes

Clinical Archives / 2007
clinicalarchives@hotmail.com
http://www.clinicalarchives.spyw.com
http://www.myspace.com/clinicalarchives

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Reviewer: LAJ - - July 10, 2007
Subject: Expressionist Soundscapes

Everyday urban sounds that most people would consider irrelevant and ignorable background noise continues to be an endless supply of source material for the remarkable compositions of sound artist Christopher McFall.

Following his recent single extended release on netlabel Alg-a "Touchtype (The Rising)", Christopher McFall brings four tracks of abstract sound art and murky drones that fall into the Clinical Archives aesthetic by way of "Grayscale is Failing." Consisting of four untitled pieces with three running between 8 - 10 minutes in duration and a shorter track of just over 2.5 minutes, "Grayscale is Failing" furthers the label’s goal of offering “eclectic and illogical electronic music.“ With these four compositions, Christopher offers an assorted montage of sampled field recordings sometimes stretched and bent into a grayish drones and, at other times, shredded into unrecognizable, microscopic grains of sounds which are then reconstructed into segments of abstract noise.

With the exception of some gentle, harmonious moments on the third track, "Grayscale is Failing" is, in general, one of Christopher’s harsher, more discordant collections and continues his expressionistic approach to sound art. What comes across in his compositions is not an impassive, detached version of the urban soundscape, but one that is personal and poignant - a subjective and passionate response to the sounds that encompass his world. These are intense, guttural, and exaggerated soundscapes where layers of contrasting sounds create a fragmented sound-space where the fine, purposeful strokes of harmony and structure are replaced by the broad, sweeping brushstrokes of expressionism.