This project is an attempt to capture the ultimate sound of the most famous type of guitar. A Fender American Standard Stratocaster electric guitar is routinely destroyed using a special chipper. This type of destruction is only the extreme form of a gesture that has become a common practice in rock groups such as The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana but initiated by avant-garde artists such as Luigi Russolo or Gustav Metzger.

Two trajectories overlap, separate and come together in a stereophonic narrative.

Ladyboi is an ongoing experimental electronic music project by cultural scholar Daniela Doutch and media artist Gonzalo H. Rodríguez. The project first started in 2019 as a side-project in Cologne, Germany but, gradually, it developed into a long term collaboration during a joint stay in the Bay Area, California, where the duo spent the first Covid-19 lockdown together. Since then, ladyboi has produced more than ten songs and incidental music tracks experimenting with sound elements in collages of field recordings, voice dubbing, instrumental improvisation, pop music and electronic beats.

In 2016, during a trip to Peru, my microphones stopped in front of this street musician. He played with his face turned to the sky, at the bottom of the Ollantaytambo’s ruins. Attached to his detuned Andean harp, a small painted panel read: “Hola: mi Nombre es Juan Diego, soy invidente Gracias x su apoyo”.

Sonic braille is at the core of the current work of Reeve Schumacher, American artist and musician. The artist’s reappropriation of old vinyls serves an unprecedented project that is both plastic and sound. Mathematical algorithms are transposed, using a cutter on the last groove of the disc, empty of music. Once played, the diamond of the record player translates this new relief into its literally handmade sound.

 

Teaser was composed only using prepared Sonic Braille discs, and illustrates the diversity of sounds that can be achieved with this project.

Tre Stelle per Beatrice, Paradiso, is part of a trilogy composed as a

score on the chants XXII of the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso of

Dante’s Divina Commedia. Using a predefined method of correspondence

between the musical notation and the original text, the work intends

to unveil a meta score encrypted by the author as a resonance of the

unspoken.

 

Tre Stelle per Beatrice is a work inviting musicians to interpret the score « extracted » from the chants XXIII of Dante’s Paradiso, Purgatorio and Inferno.

 

To date a version for acoustic solo guitar (Paradiso) and a version for electric solo guitar (Inferno) were recorded. Also, a version for a small orchestra of Purgatorio was performed by the Hyperion Ensemble and conducted by Iancu Dumitrescu.

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This work has been presented at:

 

(Paradiso)

« Sound Corner #15 »

Solo show by Samon Takahashi

Cur. Anna Cestelli

Auditorium – Parco della Musica, Rome, 2014

 

“Le choix du titre est un faux problème”, 

Solo show by Samon Takahashi

CNEAI, Paris, 2011

 

“New dimensions”, 

Group show

Cur. Germana Innerhofer Jaulin

Caserma F. Rossi, Merano, 2009

 

(Purgatorio)

Concert by Ansamblul Hyperion

Direction: Iancu Dumitrescu

Filarmonica George Enescu, Bucarest, 2011

 

(Inferno)

“Atmospheric Distortions” 

Solo show by Samon Takahashi

Cur. Lauri Firstenberg

Laxart, Los Angeles, 2009