Virtuous Circles
Info
A Question of Re-Entry #7
Notes
Taking his cue from the Kreuzberg district in Berlin, Gburek builds this piece adding field recordings & pre-recorded sounds of his own when he considers it relevant. This is sound that finds connections and establishes connections.
Reviews
Taping environmental sounds and releasing them is one thing; using those recordings in the context of a proper composition - or, as it happens here, in a live performance (Berlin, 2007) - is another matter altogether. This usually distinguishes the ones who jumped on the field recording bandwagon only to see their name on a publication from serious men like Jeff Gburek. The author closes his insightful presentation of the work with this sentence: “There is God in Godless. But there is also more in less”. He proceeds to demonstrate the axiom with an intriguing bastard piece that uses both electronics - at times pretty evil-tempered, check the piercing tones and the vicious distortions taking command from around minute 17 - and sources captured by the author in a large variety of places (Berlin, Paris, San Francisco, New York, Java, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt and Iraq). Halfway through the fascination of Francisco Lopez’s absorbing solitudes amidst the natural elements and the semi-desperation deriving from the view of a desolate suburban landscape, “Virtuous circles” subtracts rather than adding, revealing human presence (mostly Middle-Eastern voices, with a few beautiful faraway calls to prayer) in a finely textured laminate where events succeed without prior notice in fluid consecutiveness. We have heard similar things before, no question about it; still, Gburek applies the right lights and the perfect doses of noise to bring out details otherwise invisible and pollute silence just that tiny bit necessary to synthesize a state of precarious suspension which is all the more welcome, inviting me to an immediate replay when the record ends.
Massimo Ricci | Touching Extremes | www.touchingextremes.org
The release by Jeff Gburek looks pretty vague from the outside, but he wrote some extensive liner notes about the area in Berlin he lives in (Kreuzberg and Neukolln), a poor area with lots of immigrants. It’s in these streets where he made his field recordings that resulted in his piece ‘Virtuous Circles’, along with recordings from Paris, San Francisco, New York, Java, Morrocco, Kenya, Egypt and Iraq. A blend of western cities and ‘third world’ cities - the clash of cultures? On a microscale this is what Berlin is like too, a melting pot of cultures. In Gburek’s piece there is a lot of high end sounds at the start, quite abstract, but if you can, turn up the volume and play this louder. Below the high end surface there is a lot of activity going on. Later on the field recordings become louder and it’s possible to dissect voices, sounds of transport means, street sounds and such like. I thought it was a pretty strong work this one, with a particular strong composition and not just a pure work of field recording. Fascinating journey this one.
Frans de Waard | Vital Weekly | Issue 600