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Steve Roden :: Speak No More About the Leaves (SIRR.ecords, CD)
As a basis for this new recording, multimedia Steve Roden was inspired by Arnold Shoenberg’s lyrical interpretation of the poems by Stefan George. His small singing voice, sounds like a child’s on the subtitled track “Airria (Hanging Garden)” as it is reprocessed making way for this 14 minute harrowingly sad lament. The icy surroundings romanticize these lilting and layered tonalities. Roden embodies a supernatural prophet through his use of appropriately immediate and empathic reference material. This is aural performance art. On the title track a reverberating chime pitches high frequencies that rotate and disappear. This piece was recently presented as part of an installation at Pomona College Museum of Art. The editing leaves short air pockets that are empty of recorded sound. What at times seems like a soundtrack for a deserted forest on Mars, Speak No More About The Leaves is a newly designed approach to how one might tune the sounds of the air around (or inside) us. By using the vowel structure from the original composition Roden has flexed sounds that are just this side of those audible by other creatures. The second version of “Airria (Hanging Garden)” is a bit creepier, recycling in slower motion, it was is started at the beginning of this cycle. The vocal drags chillingly like a ball and chains. Overall I feel a slow shuffle to the gallows. There is a speaking-in-tongues quality to the concave gibberish that keeps your ears awake.
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Steve Roden :: Winter Couplet (New Plastic Music, CD)
Steve Roden’s Winter Couplet is a 25-minute single-track recording that uses the sounds of tea cups (as chimes) as a source. By mixing and sampling repetitive tones, Roden has created a sound collage symphony that is engaging and romantic. The instructions read to play softly or at a low volume – but even at full throttle the effect is effervescent. The cover artwork includes two watercolor illustrations depicting couples – one of two cylinders with tiny speakers at the bottom pointing upward and the other is of two different color cups and presumably an instrument similar to a drumstick. These are reflective of the materials used by Roden in the creation of his often organic sound works. Winter Couplet was inspired by the work of architect Shigeru Ban. Simplicity and beauty, sparse and zen.
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