KHSHK - Radio Nopal Otoño '23

 

Radio Nopal residency set from autumn 2023, exploring stretched timing, micro-expression, and the borders of the digital and physical through the CDMX sound- and music-scape. The track builds minimalist phrases and warped loops via samples of the residency space—including floors, chairs, tables, field recordings—exploring the permeable space between human expressive subtlety and its environmental influences.

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The work presented here encapsulates two months of intensive research on microtiming in an electronic context during a 2023 Radio Nopal residency in Mexico City. I placed particular attention on methods for working with non-grid-based timing in popular DAWs, and means of translating environmental and embodied influences on expressive timing in this context. In many cases, I harnessed sounds from the residency space itself, while also incorporating influences absorbed from excursions into Mexico City’s free improvisation and experimental electronic communities.

This track explores the transmutation of live percussive phrasing through digital tools and techniques, various approaches to warping quantized electronic material via non-grid-based recorded patterns, and the consonance/dissonance that emerges in relationships between the digital and physical. During the process, I investigate how far I can push expressive timing within Ableton Live, and explore non-metric bases for conceptions of time and rhythm. The piece concludes by blurring the territory between human improvisation and environmental patterning, leaving the origin of both timing and sound uncertain.