JOHN DUNCAN

chalkboard dust/stay alive

2016 GM25 John Duncan, Michael Esposito, Michael Muennich.
2-sided flexidisk released by Phantom Plastics/Geräuschmanufaktur.

Michael Esposito’s main interest is in capturing sound material ‘from beyond’ and shares them with interested parties, who in return treat this material into new compositions. This has resulted in a fine series of flexi discs – Esposito loves them and so do we – which includes CM von Hauswolff, Leif Elggren, Scanner, Francisco Meirino and others. Here he teams up with Michael Muennich, whom we know from the Fragment Factory label. Their piece together works with loops of EVP, and something that resembles rain or white noise, with slowly the addition of more scary sounds (objects flapping in the wind, more rain and thunder) and it is some perfect haunted house music. Spooky!

On the other side we find John Duncan (long time no hear I was thinking) who repeats the phrase ‘Stay Alive’ over and over for exactly five minutes. It has a great mysterious tonal quality. It’s almost like sound poetry, but unlike others no sound effects, no computer, nothing, just his voice, repeating the phrase; what happens when it’s over, I wondered. Is one no longer ‘alive’ then? It’s great to spot the irregularities in this piece. Great double-sided flexi! (FdW)

Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly




Audio