Cassette – Crónica

There is a Japanese word, 間 (ma), which is not easy to translate. 間 is a negative space, the volume between two parts or structural elements. 間 is an interval, a break, “the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form” (as Steven Bindeman, the author of Silence in Philosophy, Literature, and Art wrote). This interstitial space is not created by specific composition elements, but it’s rather to be meant as a zone of experience. Starting with these concepts, in Simon Cummings the silence is also not a simple absence or emptiness, but a focal point, with its own form, character and energy. These elements’ coexistence leads to a more complicated set. Following the nature of this meditation, this set leads to a certain extent of quietness and calm. We find this placidity in the first track, whose title alone is five text lines long, or in the second one, “}rest{“, a kind of silent hymn, with the brackets open on both sides, indicating anything that is before and after, a metaphor of the concept of here and there, the basic essence of any grace and beauty, an automatic conscience that lets us be carried by the flux of things. Simon Cummings lives and works in the Cotswolds (UK). The gradual process of transformation, the contrast between the raw audio sources and the difference between a sound frequency with a sound reference seem to get him very involved too. The theme of intonation is definitely not something new for any musician, traditional or experimental though he might be. But in his case this becomes a powerful propulsive force, that an algorithmic and stochastic approach make even more dense; a force able to cancel the unnecessary elements and keep only exiguous echoes, resonances and fragments of recordings. Cummings’ work is a sort of catharsis, whose starting point is his personal idea of music. The author projects his music with the idea of emphasizing the tension and the discontinuity and to instil a pervasive feeling of anxiety. The compositional process seems similar to a cure process, a detox or a deprogramming, which is the basis of the tracks of the cycle. This release by Crónica is published only on record tape format and in limited edition, so as to stress again the unconventional status and a kind of oblique elitism.

 

Simon Cummings – 間 (ma)