by Bill Gilonis
Collaborator: Chantale Laplante  

Eureka! Diary

May 19, 2009
Reaction to first hearing audio:
I’m very surprised at how difficult it is to identify these sounds. It has something of the rhythm and sound of a washing machine – possibly a defective washing machine, but there is this fog-horn in there too. It’s very busy, very engaging ... I want desperately to know what it is for some reason. It sounds a little like a train but I don’t think it is. More likely a close-mic’d washing machine with a problem. I don’t think I can add much therefore. It might be more appropriate to take away.

I was engineering in a studio many years ago for Robert Wyatt, and almost the first thing he said to me is: “Don’t worry if there are sounds already on the tape (we were probably reusing multi-track tape)… It makes it easier – like a painter painting on a canvas that already has a few marks on it”. I agree. Nothing is more difficult than a blank slate, i.e. complete freedom. Therefore, instead of opening Chantale’s audio into a blank DP session I used a session in which I had recorded the creaking front door of my apartment in Zurich (before I oiled it). I didn’t know what was on Chantale’s CD at this point so I was pleasantly surprised that the two tracks seemed to “like each other”.

May 27, 2009
I’m now well into adapting/modifying/reworking Chantale’s field recording. My friend Sophie listened to a preliminary mix and said after a minute that it was good but had no structure. This annoyed me because for me the structure is there but is vertical as opposed to linear. Why do we expect musical development to be structured linearly? This piece is developing not like an elaborate meal with several courses, but like a dense soup: every spoon looks the same but by concentrating we discern different tastes and textures. The structure is perceived, defined, experienced by the listening. I realize that this is an approach I’ve been going back to again and again for at least 20 years.

May 28, 2009
I’m less concerned now about what the original sounds were and more about how I imagine the new environment. It has become a massive industrial space full of mechanical noise. It feels like the machines are old and have being driven too hard for too long. I’ve added to this quality by looping fragments of the original recordings – usually playing precisely timed loops against each other in 5-over-4 or 7-over-4 rhythms. Other rhythmic additions: a tiny looped fragment of a live recording of a band I played with in the 90s; and a recording of a wobbling and inverted beer bottle on a stainless steel surface. The other sounds I’ve added are longer and more drone like: a creaking door (& the same at ½ speed) + viola (& treated & ½-speed viola) + clarinet. The process is both like creating a collage (i.e. adding/placing) and a sculpture (taking away).
 

Bill Gilonis is an English guitarist and composer. He co-founded the experimental rock group The Work in 1980 with Tim Hodgkinson. The group was active intermittently until 1993, recording four albums and touring extensively, including in Russia, Japan, Finland, Yugoslavia and Switzerland. Together with Tim Hodgkinson he also founded the record label Woof Records. Gilonis has also worked as a producer, sound engineer and/or musician with (among others): Robert Wyatt, News from Babel (Chris Cutler, Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Perkins, Dagmar Krause), David Thomas, Peter Blegvad, Ut, Lindsay Cooper Film Music Group, Hail and The Hat Shoes (with Catherine Jauniaux, Tom Cora, Charles Hayward, and others). Other projects include: writing and recording the music for Frida Béraud’s one-woman theatre piece, “Aus den Haaren gezogen”; a collaboration with Anja Burse on Wild Thing, an audio-visual installation piece; and a multi-media piece for the Val de Travers exhibition about Absinthe in Neuchatel, Switzerland (with Luigi Archetti, Jeroen Visser and Julien Baillod). He has been living in Zurich since 1993 where he has mixed and/or produced CDs by Swiss bands such as No Secrets in the Family, The Jellyfish Kiss and Lödig. His most recent recording – together with Canadian composer Chantale Laplante – is “Zürich-Bamberg" (Ad Hoc, 2008), a CD of electroacoustic compositions. In 2009 he published – with London-based artist Alex Julyan – a book documenting their project “Lost in Translation”
Bill Gilonis

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