Jos Smolders

*200 copies limited edition* "This album is part 1 in a series where I investigate processes with which to strip sounds from their original context and slice them into tiny bits. By doing this, sounds are separated from their source and as such severed from what they originally represented. What’s interesting and challenging for me in this project is to find the crossover area where representation disappears, and the sound becomes an abstraction. The moment when this happens varies depending on the original sound.

Already in the 1950s, Schaeffer investigated this and introduced the term objet sonore as an object that has a sonic quality of its own. In addition to the objet sonore, Schaeffer also defined the objet musicale, which is the state after the sound object is manipulated and transformed into a musical entity. One could say that the objet sonore is the raw material and the objet musicale the intermediate or the final product.

Each Textuur project is built up in a similar fashion. There are two groups of sound. First there are the collections which consist of samples of the original material. The other group consists of various permutations. The samples from the collections are torn apart into threads of various widths and subsequently rewoven into a new synthetic fabric. Sound is thus stripped from its original value and meaning and resynthesized into a new texture. Each permutation is the result of a fresh approach.

Although they are presented in a certain order on the album, you are free to play them in any order you like and even skip some parts. Like the experience I had with Carl Andre’s poems, in this project listeners can investigate at what point the source (as presented in the collections), and the meaning of that source, disappears into the sonic surface it is woven into. Sometimes it completely blends in and becomes an anonymous part of a big whole. At other times, it retains its original shape and most times simultaneously its original meaning. It’s amazing, as you will hear, how persistent meaning of actual words can be." - Jos Smolders