Bartok by Cloudland Blue Quartet
"Bartok" is the seventh in an ongoing series of "composer" releases by Cloudland Blue Quartet, which aim to take pieces by various composers (previous albums have featured treatments of works by Satie, Cage, Beethoven, Schoenberg/Webern/Berg, Haydn and Wagner) and warp them into something completely new, whilst retaining elements of the "DNA" of the original works.
"Bartok" was created in November 2022 in the midst of a complete changeover of the Crispycat Studio, a time of much stress indeed but which was eventually gotten through.
Diary entries here
21 November 2022 https://bit.ly/3LO92hD
23 November 2022 https://bit.ly/3LPRiCC
25 November 2022 https://bit.ly/3LPDCHW
27 November 2022 https://bit.ly/421uA00
28 November 2022 https://bit.ly/42kRS0q
The final day, on which the bonus tracks were created, also marked the recording of last year's "Disquietmusik VI" LP.
The pieces started out as treatments of the slow movement from Bartok's 1st string quartet, the results of which were deemed to be "not music" by the Exec Producer.
Two days later some Tbilisi ambience was added to proceedings. This from the diary: "I thought the Bartok stuff was fairly rubbish to be honest but the addition of the Field Recordings and the chance juxtapositions they produce, makes for reasonably interesting listening - and so, this morning, two very evil sounding slices of ambience were created."
The next day's entry gave this note: "On Monday night, Anne opined it "wasn't music". Now, playing it again with the Field Recordings added, all of a sudden it's deemed "quite good". Field Recordings eh? Gotta love 'em."
Next day, I decided to add treatments of various Bartok solo piano pieces to proceedings, along with snippets of short wave radio.
Writing this almost 6 months later, I can see from the files on the hard drives, that those "original versions" of the final thing were abandoned, for reasons not recorded in the diary and so, lost in the mists of time and the final versions, heard here, were created two days later but, again, not mentioned in the diary.
On the final day, as well as recording "Disquietmusik VI" for release in December 2022, I noted this in the diary: "Work too on Bartok, creating two new clean mixes without the field recordings and shortwave radio - taking it back to the "it's not music" (c) The Executive Producer statement of last week - but now with both string quartet and piano elements, rather than just the former."
As with the previous "composer" release, "Wagner", the original pieces have been slowed, manipulated and treated to leave only the barest element of Bartok's work, in fact, for this LP, only the reverb from the slowed and treated pieces has been used and this has then been overlaid with the field recordings and short wave radio.
The bonus tracks included in the download bundle are the "clean" mixes created on the final day of work on the project.
Tracklist
| 1. | Bartok Pt I | 38:23 |
| 2. | Bartok Pt II | 38:34 |
Credits
"Bartok" is the 45th soundscapes album from Cloudland Blue Quartet (Crispycat 2305 - 5 May 2023)
Credits
Samples, field recordings, short wave radio, treatments, cover (“Bartok 3", 28 November 2022) and production by David Reilly for Crispycat Recordings
Created at Crispycat Studio, Edinburgh, UK, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28 November 2022.
Based on the following pieces by Bela Bartok
String Quartet
No.1 in A minor, op.7 - I, Lento
Solo Piano Pieces
The First Term At The Piano, Sz 53, 3 Dialogue Moderato
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 1, 3 Quasi Moderato
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 1, 9 Song Adagio
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 3, 10 Funeral Song, Largo
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 4, 34 Farewell, Adagio
Improvisations On Hungarian Peasant Songs, Sz 74, 7, Sostenuto, rubato. A la memoire de Claude Debussy
Two Elegies, Op.8b, Sz.41, 1, Grave
Shortwave Radio
131492 (Backwards edited) (Forwards)
131491 (Fade In)
131534 (Heavily Edited, Partially reversed)
130199 (Edited)
131535
130200
131490
131493
Field recordings taken from "Tbilisi City Ambience" by Freetousesounds, available on Bandcamp
For best results, please listen on headphones, in the dark
(p) 2023 Crispycat Recordings © David Reilly 2023
Executive Producer : Anne Reilly
Bonus Material (Download Only) (76:31)
Tracks 3 and 4 are clean mixes of the pieces, without field recordings and short wave radio.
3. Bartok Pt I (Clean Mix) 38:22
4. Bartok Pt II (Clean Mix) 38:09
License
All rights reserved.
A quartet in name only, initially influenced by Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and The Velvet Underground's debut, songwriter & soundscaper David Reilly started musicking in 1977 by creating drones using sellotape on the keys of his dad's Bontempi Organ. The subsequent junk shop purchases of an electric guitar & fuzzbox and the acquisition of an old Beatles songbook, led him into songwriting...