Labelempreintes DIGITALesGenreElectronic
Arriving from the supplier (ships as soon as it reaches us)
Tracked express shipping from Italy, no customs or import VAT in the EU. Shipping costs
Cabinets de Curiosité brings together seven works by Alistair MacDonald composed between 1998 and 2013, almost all in the studios of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in Glasgow. The frame is the Wunderkammer of the 16th and 17th centuries, a collection of objects gathered to provoke wonder, and the composer's own first cabinet: the large kitchen radio of his childhood, with its magic-eye tuning indicator and its sounds veiled in hiss.
The Tincture of Physical Things (2000) is an alchemist's toolkit of earth, water, fire and air. Scintilla (2013) starts from the flame-worked glass instruments of Carrie Fertig. Final Times (1998), a BBC Radio Scotland commission, is “cinema for the ears” from Glasgow: subway wheels shrieking on rails, a newspaper seller, a football crowd, a distant bagpiper. Psychedelian Streams (2004) looks back to Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with a Slinky, a rattling ruler and wind chimes, worked with loops, speed changes and reversal.
Bound for Glory (Postcard from Poland) opens on a station platform in Biecz at dusk, after a week on old trains through southern Poland. Equivalence (2007) explores the hard surfaces of building bricks, after Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII. Wunderkammer (2010) follows Alfred Russel Wallace through Malaysia and Indonesia, with MacDonald's own sound collection from the jungle Wallace explored 150 years earlier.
Born in Doncaster in 1962, MacDonald is a composer, performer and sound artist with long-standing improvising duos with harpist Catriona McKay and singer Anne-Liis Poll. He directs the Electroacoustic Studios at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he became Professor in 2017.
CD in OGpak, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 18155, 2018.
“For MacDonald, staying true to his style was a cabinet de curiosité: “with its ’magic-eye’ tuning indicator and its exotic world of sounds auctioned in hiss and crackle. Language, music and noise combined as I spun the dial.” And so for this album MacDonald combined sounds that he has collected over the years, into an intriguing whole.”
“A compilation of independent works from sound artist Alistair MacDonald, ranging from 1997 to 2013, this collection of processed found sounds is a gentle exploration of everyday noises from which richer and less familiar aspects have been teased out and highlighted — sometimes with the mildest of touches, sometimes with a far more heavy-handed post-production-centric approach.”
“The music on Cabinets de curiosité is just as colorful as the gorgeous artwork on the cover (painted by Shona Barr). Though each of the seven pieces explore different territory, the title of the composition that opens the disc, The Tincture of Physical Things, is a fitting unifier.”
