Reviews:
(Vital Weekly) Fontana Mix is one of those John Cage compositions which doesn't consist of any traditional score, but consisting of four multi-channel tapes and twenty sheets, ten transparencies with points and lines and a single transparency with a straight line and ten transparencies with squiggly lines. Each performer can move around these sheets and create an interpretation how to mix these four multi-channel tapes. These tapes have six kinds of sounds: city sounds, country sounds, electronic sounds, manually produced (meaning "instrumental") sounds, wind-produced sounds (such as singing), and small sounds that require amplification, such as crickets chirping. "Coordinate points drawn from the transparencies determine the class of each tape sound, inches of tape used, its volume, timbre, mixing, and other elements." Quite an open piece, and on youtube you can find easily Cage's own eleven minute version, but here's one by Stefan Roigk, which lasts forty-four minutes. Roigk's piece is not strictly an interpretation, but his own version, using his own sounds and he creates very much a piece that his own, and not just another version. I believe computer distribution of the sounds play some part in this and the whole thing certainly feels more abstract than the more pure sound sources of Cage, but there is a nice vibrancy in this material. It bounces back and forth with all of these minor treatments to the sounds, which sounds at times processed in max/msp, but keeps moving all the time. It's ambient music, surely, from a more abstract part of the world of electro-acoustic music. In a good Cageian tradition I fell asleep while I played this, but I had this one repeat and it made a fine continuous play for a long time. Excellent release, inc a cover that is also inspired by Cage. - Frans De Waard
(Kathodik) Un’opera ispirata all’arte del maestro del non determinismo in musica, ha in ‘Unpredictable’ un titolo ben scelto, anche se leggermente ovvio. Lo spunto creativo viene infatti da ‘Fontana Mix’, composizione non composta di John Cage, basata su uno dei suoi tipici meravigliosamente contorti meccanismi di esecuzione a metà strada tra matematica e divinazione. Un sistema di fogli disegnati e fogli trasparenti con punti e griglie, che sovrapposti ai primi creano delle strutture casuali che i musicisti sono liberi di interpretare missando i suoni registrati su dei nastri multicanale. Nell’interpretazione di Roigk, quasi tre quarti d’ora di suoni stranianti, cangianti e multiformi lasciati liberi di muoversi e disporsi su una tavolozza di nulla. Suoni che appaiono, scompaiono, senza un senso altro che il proprio diritto di esistere. Suoni che esigono l’attenzione dell’ascoltatore, ma che in fondo se ne fregano se attenzione non viene loro prestata. Assemblato più o meno meticolosamente al computer, quanto si ascolta in questo cd ricorda parecchio i lavori più astratti e indefinibili di alcuni musicisti di confine, in particolare l’inarrivabile monolite nero'motubachii' di Annette Krebs e Taku Unami per la sua struttura episodica, casuale e sparsa, anche se a livelli qualitativi decisamente inferiori. Se l’assenza di forma e senso vi ammalia è un buon lavoro. - Alfio Castorina
(Monsieur Délire) A 44-minute piece that, though openly inspired by John Cage’s “Fontana Mix”, manages to run its own course and get interesting through its own means. Hodge-podge sound sources, as in Cage’s work, but assembled in ways that are more integrated, less conflictual, to the point of becoming more of an electroacoustic piece than a sound collage. Liner notes are almost in the form of an open letter to Cage, which is quite nice. This piece kept me attentive throughout. - François Couture
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