REITER / BUYL

REITER / BUYL

double bill

Eva Reiter / The Wilderness of Mirrors /2020 premiere
commissioned by ChampdAction
and Festival van Vlaanderen Vlaams-Brabant

for electric guitar and electronics
dedicated to/ Nico Couck / electric guitar
artist in residence at ChampdAction

production ChampdAction
coproduction Festival van Vlaanderen Vlaams-Brabant

We increasingly lose ourselves in a world of facades in which we can no longer trust our senses. As if through a murky mirror, Bach's musical vocabulary is thrown into the electric guitar sound world and manifests itself in a sound aesthetic reminiscent of the work of David Lynch. At the same time, this sometimes surreal atmosphere is embedded in complex, diffuse and partially overloaded electronics, consisting exclusively of "guitar monsters". We see contours or shadows of the well-known chaconne whose appearance is becoming increasingly strange. "The Wilderness of Mirrors" pursues the principle of the differentiated variation form. Everything comes back but always appears in a new light and a new context. Motives are examined in detail, rotated, stacked on top of each other, disassembled and fragmented beyond recognition.

Several times the symbol of the mirror plays an elementary role: as if himself sitting in a mirror cabinet, we look at the guitarist from different angles - and ultimately at ourselves. The mirror forms the intersection and projection plane of different soundscapes and their historical relationships: old versus new, analog versus digital, live versus electronic.
The interaction between 'old music' and the new sound language is a kind of transition zone in which we cast our contemporary view on music history. Sonic events are simultaneously projected, scattered, distorted, compressed, multiplied, diminished and magnified, all at the electronic level.
Finally, a window in a train not only reflects proximity and distance, but also our own reflection. ‘The Wilderness of Mirrors’ feels connected to all these possibilities of refraction.

Maarten Buyl / Cascade /2019
artist in residence at ChampdAction

for vocals and electronics
Naomi Beeldens / soprano

production ChampdAction
coproduction Festival van Vlaanderen Vlaams-Brabant
with support of the Flemish Community

Combining his artistic and technical experience, Maarten Buyl translates the dynamics between composition and sound design into a language of sound. This language, while rooted in the principles of both disciplines, has the potential to become an autonomous form of sound art.

The project focuses on the development of a catalog of elementary sonorous building blocks, collected through live recordings and studio recordings. The study and the practice of diverse listening practices – which are approached from a historical, cultural, sociological and technological perspective – form the base for a creative and experimental 'sound perception' methodology. Both processes – the database of sound profiles and the analytical observations – are integrated in the development of a compositional toolkit and software implementations for (real-time) sonic treatment.

Two new compositions – a piece for vocals and electronics in cooperation with soprano Naomi Beeldens (autumn 2019) and an audio play (spring 2021) – are set for creation within the framework of a development process. This process will be systematically documented in a series of podcasts featuring sound experiments, reflection and dialogue.