Francisco Meirino – Untitled Phenomenas In Concrete

Francisco Meirino

CD – cave12
This album utilizes 85 sessions of hybrid “audio paint” system HighC/UPIC and field recordings of fallen snow, breaking bones, magnetic filed and insects. The system is a structural model of additive colour inspired by the UPIC works of Iannis Xenakis that date back to the late seventies. Francesco Meirino is not new to dealing with software and his work mostly involves computers, magnetic field detectors, reel-to-reel recorders, piezolectric transducers and various other acoustic devices. In Untitled Phenomenas In Concrete Meirino re-focuses on the concept of sound design; an approach in which he composes, edits and assembles elementary sound objects and molds structures – while being careful to realize a performance that is somehow “aesthetic”. An additional intervention in post-production consisted of transferring and re-mastering the entire work on a reel-to-reel tape, in order to add a sense of analogue warmth to the cold digital feel of the UPIC treatment. This whole process proved to be quite challenging and Meirino invested four years (2008-12) to “close” his research. The sense of synesthesia created by the recordings is magically rewoven, with iterations able to transform objects made of bits into more physical representations (and the other way around too). The listening here is always lively and richly nuanced, and although the external sound elements only number eighteen the composer has managed to create a progressive continuum of thirty-minutes.