Olivia Block

News

May 8, 2013

Solo LP release due in September on Sedimental records

Foramen Magnum/Opening Night will be released on Sedimental in September 2013.

Album Text:

Foramen Magnum/Opening Night is a two-movement electroacoustic-orchestral composition. The first movement is an electroacoustic/concrète piece created from heavily processed field recordings at orchestral rehearsals and various public locations, including museums and zoos. The second movement is a layered orchestral music performed by the Chicago Composer’s Orchestra, with whom I recorded and worked for several years in order to complete this project.

Thematically, Foramen Magnum/Opening Night includes several personal interests and areas of study, including my recent work in anthropology, and Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphors described in The Presentation of Self in Every Day Life. Considering Goffman’s model, Foramen Magnum/Opening Night on vinyl might be thought of as a metaphor for the self. Side one of the record plays the chaotic, unsettling “back stage” sounds of Foramen Magnum, while the other side plays the “front stage” sounds–the orchestral layers, of Opening Night. The term “foramen magnum” literally means “large hole” or “large opening” in Latin. In anthropological terms, it is the name of the opening in the base of the human skull—a crucial morphological feature that allowed early humans to become bipedal. The titles frame the composition with images of openings–an opening into a human skull on one side of the record and an opening into night on the other side.

Conceptually, Foramen Magnum focuses on the complex social structures of rehearsals, gatherings, celebrations, and crowds. Particularly, the social life of the orchestra is examined, both in rehearsals and final presentational forms. Foramen Magnum seeks to reveal and dramatize the tiny aural details in those rich interpersonal relations, shining a spotlight upon those inter-workings.

The sounds included in Foramen Magnum represent “the complicated webs of meaning,” as Max Weber phrased it, that humans have evolved to create from the world. These sounds include nuanced, electronically processed non-verbal interactions between people, chopped up coughs and laughter, filtered sounds of children talking, walking, people moving chairs and music stands, tuning instruments, and almost imperceptible bits of language, both sonic and linguistic. Altogether the effect is an impossible gathering—one that could never exist in real life, and the feeling of preparation for some important presentation or performance. One of my working methods in this piece was scraping sound textures away to reveal other sounds underneath them, like a continual revelation of the “man behind the curtain.”

The second movement of Opening Night is a dense flow of orchestral string chords and textures, slowed-down and layered into an endlessly unfolding dream-space. These chords are combined with layers of slowed-down recordings of applause, like ambiguous sound textures underneath the orchestral music. It is smooth and flowing in contrast to Foramen Magnum, which falters and shifts throughout.

Foramen Magnum/Opening Night will be released on Sedimental in September 2013.

Foramen Magnum/Opening Night Credits:

Composed by Olivia Block 2006-2012

Orchestral Score performed by Chicago Composer’s Orchestra

Conducted by Christopher Ramaekers

Recorded in 2012 by Todd Carter in the Fine Arts Building, Chicago Illinois.

Field recordings from the following sites:

Multiple CCO orchestral rehearsals (Chicago, IL), San Diego Zoo, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum (Porto, Portugal)

April 8, 2013

Olivia Block/Cages/Jon Mueller’s Death Blues in Milwaukee

| Cactus Club, Milwaukee, WI

I’ll be performing my new solo piece for walkie talkies, microcassette players, autoharp, sensor-triggered white cathode light, and analog synth/processors at the Cactus Club in Milwaukee on Saturday, May 4th. Show starts at 10 PM. Should be fun! Hope you can come out if you are in the area. Curated by Peter Woods for the Experimental Milwaukee series. Also on the bill, Cages (NY) and Jon Mueller’s Death Blues!

For more info →

April 7, 2013

Pure Gaze and Heave To available for download on Bandcamp

I am pleased to announce that two of my earlier solo releases on Sedimental records, Pure Gaze and Heave To, are available for download on Bandcamp. There are also hardcopies available on the Sedimental website

http://oliviablock1.bandcamp.com/album/heave-to

www.sedimental.com/catalog/index.php?ID=40

http://oliviablock1.bandcamp.com/album/pure-gaze

http://www.sedimental.com/catalog/index.php?ID=28

February 11, 2013