Скачать или смотреть bois mort (2020) - Robert Menczel (one shot version)

** listen with headphones for best experience **

bois mort (dead wood) is a 30-minute solo performance with acoustic guitar, objects and live-electronics, recorded in one continuous take at HfMT Hamburg, 2020.

The program presents an alternative approach to a solo guitar performance. It unfolds as a sonic journey through the instrument and its material in search of the natural in music and the musical in nature. The guitar is reduced to its essence: a wooden box with strings that resonates using different objects and self-made tools. Live-electronics augment the acoustic sound and highlight different qualities of it throughout the performance to create an immersive listening experience.

In a concert situation, the audience is free to move around the performance to experience it from different angles and perspectives. This idea is translated into a video format by shooting an uncut one-take video with a slow but steady camera path around the performance, moving closer to or farther away from the sound source. The camera operator’s movement and position in relation to the guitar become part of the composition and represent the linearity of the musical journey visually.

bois mort consists of three pieces, each of which is introduced by a different natural soundscape.

1 still a life 0:22

The subtle crackling of branches, faint voices, a guitar on a table with objects. The instrument is (almost) playing by itself, growing gradually and breathing like a living being. A nearly broken machine is plucking its strings in an unpredictable way and creates spontaneous rhythms.

2 exyt 8:28

Water is dripping from an imaginary source. I interact actively with the guitar and thus with the sound in the space. A transducer microphone on the body of the guitar makes the instrument sing, objects are resonating in vibration with the wood.

3 driftwood 17:35

Wind is blowing from and in all directions, showing nature’s fierce and powerful side. The raw wooden sound of the guitar is amplified massively. Driftwood was composed in 2019 in Stockholm, Sweden, in a collaboration between Robert Menczel and Estonian electronic music artist Sander Saarmets (V4R1).

15.7.2020 @ Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg

Robert Menczel - acoustic guitar, live-electronics, composition
Sander Saarmets - co-composition (Driftwood)
Giorgos Stavridis - audio
Kai Lietzke, Julian Seiler - video