At the behest of the Central Committee of my split personalities' founding facets, I will now indulge shamelessly in an exhibition of multi-everything - cultural, ethnic, cunning and linguistic, and hereby submit to the public ear an array of acoustical excesses committed in the course of time. I never have grasped the opportunity, or never have bothered, to learn the tricks of the musical trade, nor become a whizz at the mixer pult. Not to make it appear worse than it is, let's just say that any proper tweaking of dynamics, peaks and the like always remained at a primitive stage as far as I was concerned. But maybe it was also the modesty of the equipment, or the fact that these sounds were above all intended to be heard with earphones, insane as this might seem to some. At any rate, you should feel welcome to adjust to your heart's content the volume, bass, treble and equalizer settings of your listening equipment. But if you use iTunes, do yourself the favour of turning Visuals on: they are incomparably more beautiful than what you get with Windows Media Player! Conditions of use, few but categorical: You may: download any of the mp3 sound files (224 kbits/s, 48 kHz) from the links below and listen to them. You may also: copy them, forward them to others, modify them, add to them, karaokize them etc. You may not: do any of the above without crediting me by name in conjunction with my email address and the URL of this page. You may not: use any of these sound brews for either commercial or ideological purposes without asking my permission beforehand. Zero Facets, or the ProtoFacets (1973, or thereabout) Warning: most people have found these concoctions to be rather demanding on their auditory systems. There is little to indicate that this has changed in the course of the past thirty-five years. Try and think of the days when solid state synthesizers had barely appeared on the market, and immerse yourself in a room crammed to the ceiling with electronic equipment, much of the latter conceived to be used by the medical profession. This experimental studio had been made accessible to anyone with an idea or two by the Royal Conservatory of Music at Leodicum, which did not imply that the Conservatory establishment approved of what was being recorded. 1. štrajk se rasprostira na dokove - 14.9 Mb Rijeka. In remembrance of a little known event in the recent past. 2. Ah merde alors, ce que ça fait du bien de prendre le vert de temps à autre - 14 Mb. The vital necessity of green surroundings was beginning to impose itself on my psyche. It never really left me again. 3. Csepel 56 - 20.2 Mb Another event which the writers of history have by and large chosen to forget. 4. Do you take your foot, dear Karl Heinz? - 5.1 Mb French speakers will readily recognize the kind of cross-linguistic play on words people used to revel in in the footsteps of Gotlib, Reiser and Wolinsky. A tribute to the infamously ridiculous and dearly behated Karl Heinz Stockhausen, whom I briefly worked for at the time. It taught me very early that as in the world of academe, fame can easily be built not on talent, but on making lots of noise about yourself, attracting the blind and faithful to work for you without giving them due credit (nor paying them the agreed salaries) and sprinkling it all with a military aura of authority. I never was able to attract fame as Hernn S. could, but with the exception of the participation of one tiny creature of the night in 12. (song) and two larger ones in 6. (song), 7. (voice), 12. (song) and 14. ("rotor tom"), whom I'd like to give anonymous credit to by writing these lines, all of the sounds here were concocted by my lonely self. 5. Pollution par le bruit (pourquoi faut-il que les compositeurs de musique électronique en rajoutent ?) - 5 Mb Yeah, really. 6. Délicatesses pour une jeune fille en état de défonce prononcée - 13.3 Mb A great discovery at the time was that one could get electronic hardware to produce sounds of its own by pushing it beyond its limits. This discredited me once and for all with the Conservatory people. The only derogatory label they could apply to such productions was aleatory, which I grew to appreciate as a compliment. The universe that surrounds us is aleatory, thankfully. As exemplified in this piece, humans can also be led to produce sounds of their own when pushed beyond their limits. I guess we could call that aleatory too. 7. Aida Revisited - 10.4 Mb A tribute to hyper-nationalistic pomposity. Granted, the effect of hyper-nationalists' and pompous ideologists' mongering can be far more dangerous, especially in today's world, but it's just that that Vecchio Verdi happened to be in the way. The First of Facets (1988-1989) Lest anyone suspect me of shunning melodiousness... 8. Syncresis / Beyond Ages of Old and Ages of New - 38 Mb Musicians trained among adding machines have persistently searched for a structure, or some structures, in this piece. Other than the Caucasus, dah ain't nun'. 9. Grusian Memories - 10.2 Mb Inspired by a short piece of Georgian folk music, title unknown, heard in 1976, which my memory brought over to Central America during a few years before returning and regurgitating it. Taktakishvili himself might have a difficult time recognizing its grusianness, especially after it had been churned out by my first hesitant attempts at multitasking recording channels. There's no question that it could sound better if it were played properly. 10. Roots/Nostalgy - 17.6 Mb Long winter months are best spent at a deserted beach resort like Alojera, with music and books. Among these, Alex Haley's Roots, which brought back reminiscences of the minor scales heard some years earlier among the Griots of Senegal. In time, other sounds, such as those created by the precious collection of bird call whistles manufactured by the Maurílio Coelho workshop of Cachoeiro de Itapemirim, have culminated in the melancholy of this piece. 11. WhoWhenWhat dat Beat? - 21.9 Mb Amazing how digging through one's 20 year old tapes, one finds recordings one doesn't remember the slightest thing about. Yet, one thing is certain, and that is that it was produced with a small, quite elementary Casio synthesizer called the HT-700. Starting afresh, my DDO has decreed that it should be listened to as trance music, even if I don't quite know what this concept is supposed to cover, and even though the term probably wasn't in use to describe a musical genre back then. 12. Union (Afronísia) - 21.5 Mb There was no moon in the sky the night I approched the nightingale by the pond of Knabstrup. But he would cease to sing abruptly if I came too close to the branch he was sitting on. One step backward was enough to let him resume his song, though. As for the other animal sounds... 1, 2, + facetinhas (1989) Algumas músicas e canções inspiradas pelo país talvez mais rico do mundo; lembranças e saudade dos amigos, meninas e meninos que conheci lá no Brasil. Não são perfeitas do ponto de vista técnico, mas seja o que for... 13. Chuva da manhã - 6.5 Mb 14. Baunilha - 5.9 Mb Alem disso, uma batidinha só pra se divertir: 15. Dança sintética - 7.3 Mb Transfered to the AIFF file format with the help of Audio Hijack Pro for Mac OSX from the original or secondary master tapes. Converted to the mp3 file format with mAC3dec for Mac OS9 and OSX. ID3-tagged with iTunes for Mac OS9. This page was coloured in honour of the now defunct great city of New Orleans and its Mardi Gras. It was only made possible by the unwavering support of my DDO.