Tribes of Neurot - "Watchfire (15 Repetitions)"

Описание: "Watchfire (15 Repetitions)" from A Resonant Sun, released on November 12, 2002

A Resonant Sun is a sonic document of an experiment conducted by Tribes of Neurot. Using the final mix of A Sun That Never Sets by Neurosis, they systematically distilled the music into its sonic essence. The process was inspired by Alvin Lucier, who in 1970 conducted a similar experiment entitled, "I am sitting in a room." Using his own spoken voice as a sound source, he recorded a short monologue in a room onto a tape machine. This recording was then played back on a second tape machine through a speaker into the same room and re-recorded onto the original tape machine. This was repeated 32 times. The result was the slow transformation of the voice from recognizable speech into harmonic ringing tones as the resonant frequencies of the room are continuously reinforced.

Tribes of Neurot utilized this same process with the entire A Sun That Nevers Sets album. The album was copied onto tape and played in a room through a stereo pair of amplified speakers and recorded onto a second tape machine. The recycling process created by Lucier was repeated 30 times. The pure ringing tones and harmonics that result from this process contain all of the emotion, sweat and blood that went into the original music. It is simply boiled down into an elemental purity and crystallized into a harmonic spirit more akin to the forging of a ritual bell than a rock album.

The results were then edited into this final form with the intention of recreating for the listener the sonic transformation of the album. Each track presented here represents a specific repetition of the process in a linear order.

Th earlier portion of the experiment is represented more completely since that is where the most obvious transformation occurs. The change in sound in the later repetitions is more subtle and best represented her exponentially by skipping ahead to later repetitions. This arrangement allows the listener to experience the entire 40 hours of work in the time span of one album.

The accompanying visual art for this was improvised after completion of the edit. The use of an oscilloscope signal combined with treated light and textures provide an appropriate visual representation of this experiment. The changes seen in the shape of the sound waves vary from the chaotic nature of the original music to the pure ringing of the resonant frequencies.