Trondheim EMP: Poke It With A Stick / Joining The Bots
Poke It With A Stick / Joining The Bots is a double album featuring many different constellations of musicians in and around the ensemble T-EMP (Trondheim Electronic Music Performance). The album explores cross-adaptive processing as a radical intervention in the communication between performing musicians. Digital audio analysis and processing techniques are used to enable features of one sound to inform the processing of another. This allows the actions of one performer to directly influence another performer’s sound, and doing so by means of the acoustic signal produced on the instrument. This may be reciprocated, too: the sound of the second performer may in turn influence the sound processing of the first.
The work is strongly based in practical experimentation, to explore these novel techniques in real musical interaction. For this, we rely on collaboration with a large group of excellent performers, many of whom are presented in the performances here. We are deeply grateful for the relentless energy and creative effort that the performers have contributed in trying to negotiate the pitfalls, swirls, vortices and uphill struggles of cross-adaptivity while at the same time integrating it with their existing deeply rooted practice.
These two albums represent different stages of the process of working with cross-adaptive techniques. The first album (“Poke It With a Stick”) represents the exploration, stumbling, finding, missing, and trickle of possible ways to tackle these challenges. These tracks were recorded during the main research period from late 2016 to early 2018. The second (“Joining the Bots”) represents the assembly, knitting together, gathering of explored solutions, and composing of (still wildly) running streams. These tracks were all recorded in May 2018.
Album cover design by Skurktur / Arne Skeie
Thanks to all performers and researchers in the project leading up to this album:
Simon Emmerson, Gary Bromham, Joshua Reiss, Victor Lazzarini, Miller Puckette, Marije Baalman, Solveig Bøe, Andreas Bergsland, Sigurd Saue, Carl Haakon Waadeland, Tone Åse, Trond Engum, Bernt Isak Wærstad, Gyrid Kaldestad, Bjørnar Habbestad, Mats Claesson, Maja S.K. Ratkje, Siv Øyunn Kjenstad, Ola Djupvik, Rory Walsh, Stian Westerhus, David Moss, Michael Duch, Ingrid Lode, Sissel Vera Pettersen, Heidi Skjerve, Kyle Motl, Steven Leffue, Jordan Sand, Kjell Nordeson, Iver Jordal, Ada Mathea Hoel, Kim Henry Ortveit, Ylva Brandtsegg. Students of the Institute of Music at NTNU, both in the Jazz department and the Music Technology department.
Mastering by Morten Stendahl at Redroom Studio
Supported by:
The Norwegian Programme for Artistic Research, NTNU, University of California San Diego, Maynooth University, De Montfort University, Queen Mary University of London, Norwegian Academy of Music.
Inspiration and assistance from:
Alberto De Campo, Curtis Roads, Andres Cabrera, Amy Knoles, Joel Davel, Matt Ingalls, Ken Ueno, Tom Duff, Julius O. Smith, Edmund Campion, Andrew Choate, Bonnie Wright, Christopher Dobrian, Lukas Ligeti, Mark Dresser, Michael Dessen, Nicolas Collins, P.A. Nilsson, Diemo Schwarz, Leigh Landy, Daniel Formo, Mathieu Lacroix, Stephanie Richards, Kai Basanta, Vitor Joaquim, Pedro Pestana, Rui Penha.
Recording Engineers and life savers: Thomas Henriksen, Rune Hoemsnes, Andrew Munsey, Tor Breivik, Terje Hallan, Gary Bromham.
Several of the song titles on these albums are ship Mind names borrowed from Iain Banks’ novels. We’d like to extend our gratitude to Mr. Banks for the stories, the names, the culture, the Culture, and for the blowing of minds.
Tags: music, release