DENIS KOLOKOL
"Proud To Be Loud"

co-released with MATHKA label, MTHK03


Denis Kolokol is a Ukrainian composer, sound artist and curator currently living in Krakow, Poland. "Proud To Be Loud" is his debut CD and his second release on AudioTong after free download "Ily" EP.

An excerpt from the interview with Denis, a part of the sleeve notes to this CD:

You studied composition but not vocal. How did it happen that the voice became your main source of sounds that you work with?

To be completely honest, I always hated my voice, espessially when it's amplified. On the other hand I wanted my performances to be more sensual, but didn't want to make it simple way - I was looking for something existential, something deep, risky. So, I thought, well, I've got my voice, it's mine, it's ugly, and it's something I will never get rid of - then why not to try making something interesting out of it?

Funny enough, when my vocal excercises actually started, I quickly noticed that the voice, I hated, was not mine - there was something completely different inside me, that never came out before.

So, I just decided not to comfort myself anymore. Comforting is also a limitation, but it's doubtful if this works. I believe it's very important to open up towards something that is not on the list of your preferences - through numerous errors, challenges and misleading cues, doubts and thoughts "maybe I have to stop trying". But if you finally go through all this, then you gain totally unexpectable results, something you would never expect from yourself.

This cd is a documentation of a process of you becoming a composer. And this moment of statement is about... how clear can you be with what you want to say?

Some time ago I got interested in the chaos theory, especially after reading a remarkable article of a mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" The basic idea of the theory of chaos is that any complex dynamic system shows extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. That means that the behavior of the same system in two cases with insubstantial difference in the initial conditions, is always unpredictably different.


4 Lorenz attractors working simultaneously. Here is clearly visible, how different systems can behave, alhought they consist of the same numbers, but initial conditions differs in the scale of 0.001 in each case. This is a part of the scores used to build density of events in 4 simultaneous sound streams.

So, I'm trying to organize music the way, which would underline this fact. For that I use so called 'chaotic maps', which is one of the most elegant branches in contemporary mathematics. There are several algorhythms known as attractors: for example, those of Henon and Lorenz. What they produce is streams of numbers, in which you can find small models of natural phenomena like growth of an organism, tornados, cyclons - they literally "look like" those appearances. Once calculated, those numbers can be mapped to parameters of sound: pitch, duration, density, attacks and decays, spectral characteristics, etc. With this I seek to build a small audio model of much broader system.


An example of Henon distribution in 2-D system of coordinates, where Y is a signal rate of sound granulas, and X is time.

We live in undoubtedly complex dynamic world, and everything that is happening around us is a huge mess - all the chaotic connections between things and events demonstrate that sensitivity, insignificant occurencies can cause global changes. All things are interconnected, there are no things of smaller or bigger importance. On a global scale all things are important as well as any particular thing is unimportant.


Tracklist:

1. Feedback Glotka
guitar: Alexander Chikmakov
voice, electronics: Denis Kolokol

2. There Are No Others, There Is Only Us
soundtrack for the s/t video installation by Marc Silver
guitar: Alexander Chikmakov
electronics: Denis Kolokol

3. Wake Me Up And Ruin My Day
voice, electronics: Denis Kolokol

4. Proud To Be Loud
a stereo version of a multichannel piece composed and performed in a residency at California Institute of Arts in 2009
voice: Carmina Escobar
electronics: Denis Kolokol






Cover painting: Boguslaw Bachorczyk, On The Roof, 2010, mixed media

Mastering: Jos Smolders at EarLabs.



Order: 10 EU (shipping included)

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REVIEWS:

Nietypowy format mają też płyty z sublabela zacnego krakowskiego AudioTonga, czyli wytwórni o nazwie Mathka (teoretycznie powinno być raczej: Córkha). Są opakowane w zwykłe papierowe koperty, ale towarzyszą im dodatkowe okładki formatu 7-calowego singla, dzięki czemu grafika okładkowa robi większe wrażenie, a same płyty trudno pomylić z innymi. Ostatnia z nich – album ukraińskiego kompozytora Denisa Kolokola „Proud to Be Loud” – nie dała się więc zagłuszyć w stercie innych. I została zgodnie z tytułem głośno odsłuchana.

Na drugą już płytę zafascynowanego matematyką i teorią chaosu Kolokola dla AudioTonga (pierwsza, „Ily” – tak a propos dyskusji – została wydana jako plik cyfrowy) składają się kompozycje z ostatnich trzech lat, w tym muzyka do instalacji Marca Silvera (utwór na gitarę i elektronikę „There Are No Others, There Is Only Us”) oraz wielokanałowy utwór powstały w California Institute of Arts (tytułowe „Proud to Be Loud”). Dominantą wszystkich jest przetwarzanie brzmień gitarowych i głosu, zwykle samego Kolokola, ale w utworze tytułowym, kompletnie pozbawionym ograniczeń stylistycznych i kojarzącym się momentami z nagraniami Mai Ratkje – wokal Carminy Escobar. „Wake Me Up Ruin My Day” przypomina klasyczne kompozycje muzyki konkretnej, a najbardziej przystępny w zestawie „There Is No Others…” ciekawie eksploruje dźwięki jeżdżenia bo gryfie.

Nawet gdy w „Feedback Glotka” mamy sporo klasycznych, nieprzetworzonych brzmień gitarowych, to zostają nam zaprezentowane z taką intensywnością, że wydają się nieproporcjonalnie dynamiczne. Jesteśmy współcześnie przyzwyczajeni do jednostajnej głośności wynikającej z kompresji nagrań, tymczasem to, co robi Kolokol, wydaje się iść w dokładnie odwrotnym kierunku. Mamy tu olbrzymią dynamikę, swobodny, przestrzenny dźwięk i mnóstwo zaskoczeń na każdym kroku. Jedyny mankament to kilka pretensjonalnych momentów w „Proud to Be Loud”, choć to zarazem najbardziej ekstremalny i (jak się wydaje) najbardziej pracochłonny technologicznie utwór Kolokola. Uwiera nie tylko sam nośnik – to nagranie również nie pozostawi was w obojętności.

(Bartek Chacinski, Polifonia)



Being musician makes you seek for new and new ways of expression both in terms of the composition and the structure of the material as well as the technological means to transpose the ideas into flesh of the musical track. Since so much time I have spent on intensive and extensive listening of music I deeply feel that the quality lies in ideas and the concept rather than the technological means. The pressure you put onto the ultimate technological search certainly leave behind the creative spirit and the challenging obstacles you can encounter during the whole process.

Having said that Denis Kolokol's first cd(!) is a way more ahead of many improvised gems I could ever imagine. The obvious reasons for liking this material as the perfect time-space balance and first outburst of this experienced ukrainian composer now residing in Cracow, Poland are preceded by so much skill and craft and ingenuity put into the composition which really feels like giving a new paths in experimental improvised music dominated by sonorous trips. Vocal parts mingled with acoustic guitar tracks and their processing, drone and harshy bits with laptop treatise, analogue synths so delightfully and subtly referring to synth psychedelia...I cannot recount all the raisins in this cake. Denis, it was so worth waiting for Your full release!!!

(Hubert Napiórski, felthat reviews)