Consoled is an album by Thomas Transparent, american composer, music journalist and writer, known from his publications
in The Wire, His Voice, A2 and other magazines.
He's also a real nomad, who spent many years travelling and living in Asia and Eastern Europe, being active in those places
in the field of musics and musical research.
The recordings presented here consist of samples and recordings done in Japanese shopping centres and with the use of manipulated electronic toys and outdated video games systems. The final result, says Thom, was meant to be a kind of 'leisure time / consumer symphony' using sounds associated with the luxuries of the '1st world,' but twisting these sounds into something much more intense, something which hints at the side effects of such disposable, fleeting culture.
More precised description of these works written by the artist himself follows below. We only need to add that we enjoyed these recordings a lot and highly recommend downloading them.
Also, please visit Thom's website for more information about the man himself and about his activities.
This audio is part of the collection:AudioTong It also belongs to collection:Netlabels
THE DOMESTIC FRONT: CONSOLED
Release Notes by Thomas Transparent
The first piece on this virtual release, “Do You Daydream in Black and Pink”, was originally intended to be the sound portion of a sound installation dealing with a general theme of desire. I thought extensively about all the different parameters and long-term consequences of desire, coming up with a variety of different approaches that could deal with this subject. For me to make something that expressed my personal, life-long relationship with desire, and yet could be understood on a universal level, I decided the best approach was to take various signifiers of desire –both personal AND impersonal- and to atomize them into starkly simple particles of sight and sound.
To this end, I’ve done a number of different things. I composed a lengthy stereo sound piece that fuses together the above elements of personal and universal desire, using ‘circuit-bent’ electronic children’s toys, home video game systems and shopping mall recordings from urban Japan.
As a child of 9-10 years, my desire for material hoarding was paralleled only by my current desire for societal acceptance of my unorthodox and supposedly ‘extreme’ ideas. At this age, it was
really impossible for me to develop the kind of rationales that I can today against defining my entire life by my small collection of shiny, slick electronic novelties. In one notable example, coin-operated arcades were, for my pre-pubescent self, an electronic womb of constant stimulation and freedom from ‘meaning’ and responsibility.
Just as this experience is now hopelessly distant to me, the sounds generated by these toys (primarily a Texas Instruments Speak + Spell and a Sega Genesis home gaming console) are reproduced in this piece as a ghostly residue of their original form, often looped, time-frozen and wildly distorted to suggest the anxiety surrounding my perpetual hunt for escapism from socialization.
Later, in my adult life, I would experience other adults reaching this feverish and childish state in a number of shopping centers throughout Japan- it was the first time in a while that I had seen anyone yearning, with the same intensity, for an escape from spiritual / immaterial obligations (the pressure on Japanese citizens to embody ‘Japanese spirit,’ in particular, is much more pervasive than any such thing I’ve experienced as an American.) The recorded ambience of these places also weaves in and out of the listener’s perception as this piece progresses.
The second track on this ‘virtual’ release was a kind of ‘first take’ of “Do You Daydream…”, and was originally intended as part of a split vinyl release with Lasse Marhaug. This never came to pass, although a portion of the piece debuted at the ‘Digital Art Weeks’ festival in Zurich over the summer of 2007.
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