John Hudak

Despite his long career in sound art, the name John Hudak doesn't appear that often in Vital Weekly, perhaps mainly because releases these days are a bit sparse. Here on 'On And On' we hear him play guitar. Inspired by the black-capped chickadee, which is a bird in case you wonder, which sang four notes, A to G, G to F, and the next day it only sang A and G which inspired Hudak to strum his guitar for a long time and then transferring it to midi information, in which the computer simplified the strumming. The resulting melody was then used to trigger the pitches of an instrument much like a dulcimer. A seventy minute piece is the result, which breathes the minimalism Hudak is best known for. Notes are repeated in a simple, relaxing, minimal way, yet one has no sense of listening to long loops of the material.





It's not going from a to b and back, but its a strict linear composition. I was playing this while I had a visitor and meanwhile I was transferring a cassette to another computer.- the cassette was old so the mechanism was chirping, a bit like a bird. The doors were open, and outside sounds - cars, more birds - sweetly drifted in and out of the Hudak piece. It added to the already highly ambient piece of music. Also by itself, with headphones, this is a rather beautiful piece of music. I sometimes complain things are too long, which they usually are, but these seventy minutes could easily last an entire evening, sitting on the balcony and create a new mix of taped and environmental sounds. Excellent ambient music. Vital Weekly (FdW)