Gustavo Matamoros
In Gated Memory of Gentle Giant (1995)
Gated Piece for one or more live performers and prerecorded Noise Melody
LISTEN
Studio realization completed and mastered in 2020, featuring Davey Williams on electric guitar. Published by Subtropics Editions in 2022 as part of INDIVISIBLES.
THE WORK
Gentle Giant was one of the few English bands I discovered as a teenager in Venezuela during the early 1970s that sparked my interest in audio recording and electronics. These bands approached the recording studio creatively, as an integral part of the music. Even now, I continue to discover how deeply the recordings of Gentle Giant—and, most importantly, Egg—remain embedded in my unconscious sound mind, like some form of spirit possession.
In Gated Memory of Gentle Giant belongs to a series of works I call Gated Pieces. A prerecorded track runs continuously but remains inaudible until the sound of a live performer opens a noise gate. What emerges depends upon the exact moment the performer chooses to play: an unpredictable fragment of the recording becomes audible and invites a response. When the performer stops, the gate closes, although the recording continues unheard.
The prerecorded part of this work is a Noise Melody constructed from samples taken from Gentle Giant recordings. A single performer may control one gate, while realizations involving multiple performers can assign an independently operating gate to each musician. The performers therefore determine what is revealed, how the interaction unfolds and, when the track is looped, how long the piece lasts.
SHIM REALIZATION — 1995
Keith Hedger requested the work. Its earliest documented performance took place on September 15, 1995, during SHIM and Guests: An Evening of Experimental Music at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Keith Hedger performed on trumpet and David Irwin on clarinet, with each musician playing into a separate microphone and controlling an independent noise gate. I operated the live electronics. Through the dynamics and timing of their playing, Hedger and Irwin could open one gate, the other or both, causing different portions of the stereo Noise Melody to emerge within their improvisation.
A recording of this performance was released in 1996 on SHIM, the first compact disc issued by Big Tiny Music. The track lasts 8′37″.
Read about the SHIM CD in Publications.
DAVEY WILLIAMS AND FRED LONBERG-HOLM — 1996
In 1996, electric guitarist Davey Williams and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm performed a duet realization as members of the In a Fishtank ensemble at Merkin Hall in New York City.
Davey opened alone, with the direct sound of his guitar panned left while his playing gated the right channel of the stereo Noise Melody. Fred later entered with the relationship reversed: his direct cello was panned right while triggering the left channel.
The two gates opened and closed independently. Their playing continually recomposed the spatial relationships within the prerecorded material, producing combinations and movements that did not exist in the original stereo track. When both gates were open, the complete stereo field could emerge. At other moments, fragments appeared and disappeared independently across the space. Davey and Fred responded to one another as well as to whatever their playing happened to reveal.
STUDIO REALIZATION — 2020
During one of Davey’s later visits to Miami, I proposed recording a new realization. Because of the resources available at the time, only his direct electric-guitar performance was recorded. The gated track was intended to be added later, but the recording remained unfinished. Davey died before I was able to return to it.
During the 2020 lockdown, I listened again to his isolated guitar performance. Using it as the control signal, I adjusted the gating to follow what I heard in his playing and restore the interactive situation that had been anticipated during the recording session. I also remastered the Noise Melody and completed and mastered the resulting studio realization.
Davey’s recorded performance thus determined which fragments of the continuously running track became audible years later. What began in 1995 as a memory of Gentle Giant became, through circumstances I could not have anticipated, a work held in the playing and memory of Davey Williams.
The completed recording was first presented publicly as a tribute to Davey during the Subtropics 25 Festival at the Deering Estate in September 2021, and later at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn during a memorial event for him. It was published in 2022 as part of INDIVISIBLES, a limited-edition art album of works by David Dunn and Gustavo Matamoros spanning four decades.
The artwork associated with the recording is Ralph Provisero’s interpretation of In Gated Memory of Gentle Giant, created for INDIVISIBLES.
— G.M.