Yan Jun
KwanJin Rec. Yan Jun : Music for listening to the Moon (CN,2010)****'
For me, something (an art product, a focus, a recording,..), only becomes truly a creative form when it shows something like an aesthetic value as well. An aesthetic value provides the kind of sonic quality in which more inner qualities and relationships become audible. Just making random noise hardly ever does that. In reality it can be so that the discovery of a natural feedback resonance could already do the trick, showing a real difference of focus, which allows a perfect possible workable interaction, in which can be shown a changing shapes and movement. The results in this case are exactly like a naturally achieved electronic music composition, while it actually is an electroacoustic recording. I also loved the artwork of the CD package. You might know that there has been created a lot of Noise (music) in China, which also is noise in nature, but this one also breaths meditation, even in the artwork itself. Even the thin lines printed on the CD gives the impression of a carefully carved object.
The recording is nothing but a continuous field recording from two water pipes, with simple mastering (Denoise and Compression only). Used were two contact microphones on metal pipes in Yan Jun’s washroom, recorded for one hour with heavy compression and noise reduction. You can hear the basic noise of mixer, the basic feedback resonance of the present sounds and spaces, which nearly uses the pipes like a radio receiver to transmit the signal with an electric feedback, while water at times drips or streams and the pipes themselves resonate or vibrate certain different and more direct sounds as well. The electric overtone drones which we hear the whole way through are combined with the resonance in the material (the pipe movement) itself and the effect of the water echoing from the inside as well. The electric signal has an interesting natural overtone evolution while the other signals are more randomly showing itself, but also, with a certain pulsation. The whole effect formed a soundscape with certain natural evolutions. It truly made a piece of the environment audible, which seemingly was also interesting to listing to listen to, or to meditate upon. Musically the effect I will describe also like being a bit like a minimal version of the overtones only like they are heard on Nurse With Wound’s “Soliloquy for Lilith”, while here they are entirely being based upon the activity in pipes, and the electric feedback of all sorts of reverberations being present in this tiny bit of space, via an audible focus of a surrounding and to a degree rather natural movement.
Yan Jun is also part of the The Tea Rockers Quintet, whose album will be reviewed soon on my webpages too. He is also part of the Impro Committee, and of FEN (FarEast Network). He also owns the label Sub Jam with its sub label Kwan Jin Records.
Label info: http://www.subjam.org/archives/890
