David Gedosh - Architectronics
Architectronics. Building sound worlds. These are the voyages of the sound sculptor Dave Gedosh.
A lot of you might think, why would i want to listen to the incidental sounds of a woodshop classroom, or a train station? To which i reply "awesome! You understand the basic building blocks, the raw materials being arranged and sculpted. Now let's find out what he's building with them."
Right from the get go, i can assure you that this isn't unfamiliar territory. You will almost instinctively hear these pieces like the ambient soundtrack of a movie. Probably a horror movie. Why? Because this kind of heightened sense of environment is also what happens when the adreneline of fear kicks in, and the machete wielding madman could be right around the next corner. There is, however, a much wider and more interesting world beyond that conditioned response, you just have to keep putting on clean pants and walking forward. Luckily, Dave's really good at easing that tension with more traditional harmonic/rhythmic structures.
Which brings us to listening strategies. It should be obvious that these aren't pop songs, so why would you force yourself to listen to them that way? These are sonic environments, not melharmonic episodes. It's a chance to explore your own psychological reaction to pure auditory phenomena. It might be frightening, or peaceful, playful or angry. The sounds of water might strike you as naturally soothing, or they might make you have to pee. I don't know, you're learning about you. I have a slight disadvantage in this regard, because whenever you tune into Bottle's Funky Funtime Fiesta, you're watching me intentionally play with these parts of my brain like legos. It's super fun, but the downside is that i have to manually change how i feel whenever i don't like it. It's like reprogramming a whole neighborhood of garage door openers in a single afternoon. Sure, i can see Hit The Brett-man Hartler in the Amazon box (because rectangles), but i don't have to believe that's real, even if BBC News runs an idiotic story about it. I can read Dr. Seuss or Sartre, listen to Michael Jackson, or say "pretend i don't know what your shop-talk means and describe what it looks like," because i'm a freethinking anarchist. I don't recognize authority. I recognize it when you're trying to exert it, that's not what i meant, i meant i don't equate function with value. I recognize intelligence, experience, passion, i recognize that you might need artificial structure and imagined agency, but i have to act based on what is actually going to happen. When you lie to me, i just think oh, ok, you don't know what you're talking about, and plan for it to not work out properly. Structurally speaking, lying and simply guessing wrong look pretty similar after it all goes haywire.
Business is buying and selling commodities, staff meetings and greeting scripts and color schemes and uniforms are not business. I have no clue when UPS will show up, because i don't work for UPS; stop promising things you can't control. Man, i'm so far afield it's like i wandered into a different stadium. Get back on track, Bottle.
By complete coincidence, track 4 reminded me that i have quite a few recurring dreams that feature unreal architecture. Houses connected by intangible secret passageways, invented structures overlayed on top of real directions and spacial relationships, amorphous locations with detailed mental mappings of the surrounding but unseen area. My brain naturally wonders what things look like from the other side, inside out, skewed at a 12-degree angle. Amazingly enough, i can't say i remember there ever being a thunderstorm in there. Oh, hey, there's Megadeth's Foreclosure of a Dream from the subconscious cellar, because word substitutions. Not about the farm mortgage crisis and the rise of corporate agribusiness. Focus.
And we end with the wonderful Point Flow. What makes that center section sound so wet, and the outer bookends so vibrantly electric? I don't know, but fountain inside a Faraday cage is what my mind says it looks like.
The real subject here is decoupling the sound from its source. Some signals are very strong and coherent, rain and thunder for example. Other less familiar sounds can become highly abstract and intangible. Somewhere in the world, someone might be able to differentiate types or even brands of power saws (i can tell the difference between circular saws and reciprocating saws), but for some people that signal might degrade to a mere "metallic" connotation, or even take on the qualities of some shrieking animal (real or mechanical). And now that we're juggling Piercian Interpretants like professional dinner theater entertainers, i will step back into the shadows and let you explore those secret synapses of your own think box.
Oooh, I just had a memory. One time Dave forbade me from singing in a bar, so i stopped. I don't blame him, my voice is irritating even by DIY gutter folk standards.
What was my point? Oh yeah, what are your thoughts? No, not about the lady who put glue in her hair, about the pieces on Architectronics. I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my copy of the physical CD. I'm an old-school tangible media kind of guy, as you might have guessed, but i certainly can't complain about the accessibility modern technology brings to the table. I tried taking the turntable along in the car one time, but it just wasn't practical. Cheers.
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