Johan Nystrom: Cicada Jubilee

Rolling Stones (2018) for Purls & Jars Composed by Ji Youn Kang Performed by Ji Youn Kang & Mei Yi Lee 3rd/June/2018 Studio Loos Den Haag https://jiyounkang.com

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An excerpt from one of Constant's own soundtracks for New Babylon (c. 1968) with kind permission of Fondation Constant.

On one of these rainy Autumn evenings, I sneaked into the New Babylon building located behind the Den Haag Central Station, with a broken-wheel heavy suitcase of mine, while I was back in Den Haag from Berlin after one of these perpetual travels. As I entered the foyer, there was some loading and unloading taking place around the adjacent Albert Heijn. There were a few passersby as well walking shadily through the deserted and semi-darkened corridors. The broken wheels of my suitcase were enlivening the paranormal underbelly of this building with nomadic sonic utterances. There were a few migratory birds outside proclaiming the coming of evening in rapturous murmurs. I took out my recording device, and started to chronicle these emergent interactions in mediated aural traces, before its battery went out. I brought these sounds home, and re-listened to them. This listening formed the work Berlin Babylon and a Migratory Bird in which a bird literally entered and left a trace as an expired memory. Acknowledgements: the unnamed birds, the loaders/unloaders, and the broken wheels of my suitcase.

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piano: Akane Takada. music: Yota Morimoto. a fragment of a piano piece composed and recorded in new babylon. unlike its original form this version is devoid of parts other than the piano. the emptiness and the somewhat decontextualized musical time leave space for the 'raw' resonance.

BMB con. perform with Constant's own "electronic controller" from 1968.