Venue / McAulay Studio, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date / 2014.04.29
Featured Artists
Vuvuzela Qu (China), Bjorn Ho (Hong Kong)
Entitled Virtuosic Electronica, this event features Vvzela Kook and Bjorn Ho, in two sets of laptop-based improvisation that promise to impress the audience with their highly-polished, carefully crafted and refined soundscape.
CMHK prides itself for being a platform for homegrown emerging talents, and artists who deserve more attention. This edition of Sonic Anchor will feature two names in laptop electronica we think you should definitely get to know: Vvzela Kook and Bjorn Ho. Bjorn Ho is a guitarist, interactive designer and sound artist. His high-pitched, seductive and tone-rich electronica samples the noises of Sai Yeung Choi Street, and transforms them into a strange and beautiful chill-out groove. Vvzela Kook – a protégé of the legendary Chinese sound artist Yao Dajuin – received her training as a media artist at the China Academy of Art. Her superbly crafted, highly detailed and carefully tuned soundscape speaks with poeticism, a sense of structural balance, and an impressive virtuosity – if one could indeed be virtuosic with the laptop.
Concert review
Sonic Anchor #18 Virtuosic Electronica
By Samson Young
How does one listen to one’s native language as shapes – that is to say, to consciously mask the meaning of language, so as to hear utterances not as words that convey meaning but as discrete sonic objects? Artistic experiments in the last several decades – including musique concrete works that sought to reconfigure recordings of speech, decades of exploration in sound poems, and extended vocal compositions including Berio’s epic Sequenza for voice – have demonstrated that acousmatic listening is indeed entirely probable. That acknowledged, whenever speech is used in a sound work there are often moments of slippage when I find myself succumbing to the desire to ascribe meanings, even if I’d been signaled not to, and even if it is in a language that I am not familiar with. So the more interesting question for me is always this: what are the sets of conditions that make acousmatic listening easier?
Bjorn Ho began his set at the last edition of Sonic Anchor with a field recording of the Shum Shui Po area. The soundscape, the conversations and the cacophony of irregular rhythm were soon overwhelmed by a rather more regular and melodious groove, consisted mostly of metallic sounds that for me occupied an entirely different sonic space. I found myself first growing impatient with the distance that these materials consistently maintained. As my mind wandered, I occupied myself with eavesdropping on the conversations. But then out of nowhere, a violin track that functioned like a musical quotation is thrown into the mix. For a brief magical moment, the awkward disjointedness was rationalized, aestheticized, and given form. From that point on I found myself listening cinematically, as if to the sound track of a wonderfully non-sensical movie. A minimal electro-dance groove closed out his set, conjuring the image of a chase scene at the Apliu Street that ended abruptly. I didn’t feel like I was always in good hand – but it was most certainly a fun ride.
Vvzela Qu’s set could not have been more different. It was twenty minutes of blissful pure forms. Qu is true a formalist: well-crafted turns, wide palette of tones that travelled the EQ spectrum, carefully timed waves of swell – many features of her playing suggested a natural sense of structure and balance. At the most intense sections, Qu’s sound was reminiscent of the lush soundscape that is a signature of her former mentor Dajuin Yao, yet it is at the quieter moments that Qu’s highly personal and hauntingly beautiful voice really emerged.
Venue / McAulay Studio, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date / 2014.04.29
Featured Artists
Vuvuzela Qu (China), Bjorn Ho (Hong Kong)
Entitled Virtuosic Electronica, this event features Vvzela Kook and Bjorn Ho, in two sets of laptop-based improvisation that promise to impress the audience with their highly-polished, carefully crafted and refined soundscape.
CMHK prides itself for being a platform for homegrown emerging talents, and artists who deserve more attention. This edition of Sonic Anchor will feature two names in laptop electronica we think you should definitely get to know: Vvzela Kook and Bjorn Ho. Bjorn Ho is a guitarist, interactive designer and sound artist. His high-pitched, seductive and tone-rich electronica samples the noises of Sai Yeung Choi Street, and transforms them into a strange and beautiful chill-out groove. Vvzela Kook – a protégé of the legendary Chinese sound artist Yao Dajuin – received her training as a media artist at the China Academy of Art. Her superbly crafted, highly detailed and carefully tuned soundscape speaks with poeticism, a sense of structural balance, and an impressive virtuosity – if one could indeed be virtuosic with the laptop.
Concert review
Sonic Anchor #18 Virtuosic Electronica
By Samson Young
How does one listen to one’s native language as shapes – that is to say, to consciously mask the meaning of language, so as to hear utterances not as words that convey meaning but as discrete sonic objects? Artistic experiments in the last several decades – including musique concrete works that sought to reconfigure recordings of speech, decades of exploration in sound poems, and extended vocal compositions including Berio’s epic Sequenza for voice – have demonstrated that acousmatic listening is indeed entirely probable. That acknowledged, whenever speech is used in a sound work there are often moments of slippage when I find myself succumbing to the desire to ascribe meanings, even if I’d been signaled not to, and even if it is in a language that I am not familiar with. So the more interesting question for me is always this: what are the sets of conditions that make acousmatic listening easier?
Bjorn Ho began his set at the last edition of Sonic Anchor with a field recording of the Shum Shui Po area. The soundscape, the conversations and the cacophony of irregular rhythm were soon overwhelmed by a rather more regular and melodious groove, consisted mostly of metallic sounds that for me occupied an entirely different sonic space. I found myself first growing impatient with the distance that these materials consistently maintained. As my mind wandered, I occupied myself with eavesdropping on the conversations. But then out of nowhere, a violin track that functioned like a musical quotation is thrown into the mix. For a brief magical moment, the awkward disjointedness was rationalized, aestheticized, and given form. From that point on I found myself listening cinematically, as if to the sound track of a wonderfully non-sensical movie. A minimal electro-dance groove closed out his set, conjuring the image of a chase scene at the Apliu Street that ended abruptly. I didn’t feel like I was always in good hand – but it was most certainly a fun ride.
Vvzela Qu’s set could not have been more different. It was twenty minutes of blissful pure forms. Qu is true a formalist: well-crafted turns, wide palette of tones that travelled the EQ spectrum, carefully timed waves of swell – many features of her playing suggested a natural sense of structure and balance. At the most intense sections, Qu’s sound was reminiscent of the lush soundscape that is a signature of her former mentor Dajuin Yao, yet it is at the quieter moments that Qu’s highly personal and hauntingly beautiful voice really emerged.