Alexander Sokolov: soundsculpture
Sound as for 'Alejxis' the pneumatic pitch tuning for percussion
( In Myspace/Google see also 'ejxtra' for digital-analogue remixes....see 'ejxess' for digital experimental compostition.....see 'alejxisbass' for free downloading)
Myspace Musician Comments:................................................... "sensational!...groove..fascinante...increible...esto es bestial...almost as crazy as I am!...placer...love for your work...great sound...Full vibes...bass drums are great...intelligent...Nice tunes...good music, nice ritme...different and inspiring...luv your tunes , very roots...Es mesmo GRANDE...very cool project...sounds great...so trancy...un trabajo cool...Hot Music !...Interesting drumming...really like your compositions!...muy interesante...buen sonido!!!...Cool sounds...es admirable...fantastic work...sounds really cool...very nice tracks...NICE SOUND...is beautiful...very intresting sond...Cool percussion!...pretty impressive...musical univers which is unique...percussion power...super unique!...cool songs...maravilliosas tu trayectoria...lafacianostrasorridentestasottoipiedivostri...Buena musica que hacer...hot beats...so cold beats...Muy buenas y curiosas percusiones...incredible wonderful music...the "coolest" music! Awesome voices...soul in your tunes!...Great music...Nice music.You Rock...Very interesting project with percussion...A True Master ll Heart & Soul IN Harmony With Creation...precioso...muy inspiradora...original...Wow, the drumming here is wonderful...love your percussion...wonderful mood!...Beautiful...amazing!!!...amazing sound and Vibe!!!!!!....tres bien...tanta energĂa...wonderful...ual!!!!!!...i love this tunes!!!!!...yes I think the world is
begging to be ready for all these...very cool...fascinante...So Much Love..So Much Groove..So Much Soul!!...cool grooves...Very powerful!...tuned drums souns really great!...love your specific world...muy buenas percusiones...drumming sounds Great!!...beautiful and evocative music...Wonderful drum!....maestro.."
Sound sculpture is of course music.
My 'music' has roots in that influence of the planets which has seen me attuned with stonecarving, that is with the use of my fore-limbs and fingers, and the manipulation of them by my eyes to shape an outside reality. In fact it also relates to the lower limbs- that is to dance. The binary nature of the limbs should by now have become useable as single unit, and certainly the binary nature of action, that is action and in-action, should have developed through this technical function into personal expression.
In fact that expression was fixed years ago, in 1995, when I recorded the full effects of this sound sculpture. The recordings however were made on analogue tape and very narrow tape, that is with 1/16 or a little over a millimetre of tape holding a huge amount of sound- an amount of sound produced by multiple instruments up to about 3 feet or 1 metre wide. Therein lies the problem which has dogged me for several years, of how to present such large quantity of 'power' in such small space, or rather how to digitalise such quantity as recorded in such meagre space. This becomes so technical that I have struggled ever since to re-open the power locked therein.
However the digital realities which have become available since 1995 have made of the project an inescapable attraction. Having concentrated on this un-locking since 2004 I am ever more convinced of the success of the sounds I created and of the beauty of the variations upon it, all of which which resulted between the bodily binarism acting upon purely abstract shape and volume.
Concavity and convexity, and resonance captured and magnified within these variations were all the boundary in which the external living limbs and mind imprinted order upon the analogue tape. The orchestral nature of these sounds -which you may come back and find anyday- derive from the close almost familial design of the intruments, which were utterly new to the planet at the time . I, however, simply recorded and shelved, as I calculated that it was the produced sound alone which was of interest, as the musical expression of myself.
For techno-sculptural , scroll down.
Myspace text (Alejxis is the musician name of Alexander Sokolov)
The Influence of Tuned Drums: El hecho con todo esa musica es el control de tonos, lo que se llama 'perfect pitch', o tonos perfectos, quiere decir que los tambores especializados esten entre ellos mismos en uno acuerdo... asi casi cualquiero ritmo dar la belleza, porque ellos ya la tienen por sus proprias formas y caracteres un estado de acuerdo entre ellos. Total, que eso califica cada ritmo que sale como un resultado de lo que ellos, los tambores, exigen, y, asi, era yo su esclavo solamente, siguiendo ellos. Eso control que ellos tienen me ha dado mucho alegria, por ser como uno ciudadano de un paraiso populado con caracteres simpaticas y bellas- Identidades vivas en una sociedad perfecta de sonido, hecho por ser independiente de todo origin salvo la musica suya- enfin, la abstraccion perfecta.
(vease abajo).. Recording artist Alejxis takes percussion to the broadest levels of timbre and pitch in an effort to reach an 'emotional percussion' and a 'wall of drum-sound'...........................................................................Alejxis founded the 'The Healing Drums of Brixton' during 1976 with Lori Vambe and Michael O'Shea, playing street percussion and festivals in London and the U.K, apppearing in the repeated 1976 BBC programme 'Ethnic Britain'. That was the long hot summer and rain was finally made at the Bath Arts Festival. .................In 77 the Brixton transformed into 'Presence' with Alejxis and Lori Vambe before running underground after Virgin Records declined to release the Presence recordings in 1980, saying 'Wouldn't you add vocals?' and 'How about trying us again in 10 years!'. Vambe and O'Shea, may he rest in peace, thereafter diverted theirselves into string percussion investigations and Alejxis continued skin percussion research. In those days there were no skin drums around. In London only the royal Ghanaian Sidi's Drum Factory produced giga Marimbas, and kept the West African highlife pre-afrobeat jive alight. Lori and Alejxis always followed the central Highland Pulse based drumming ideals..................................................................... Alejxis began carving drums from solid timber around 1978, going thru the whole gamut of tuning: Kenya twisted skin straps, Conga type steel bolt tuning, even Taiko nailing, and then finally formulated the idea of the present band as a recording orchestra in 1987, and, by 1995 was ready for recordings of such a total skin-percussion orchestra................. The use of heavy rawhide needs extreme pitch control, which Alejxis 'field recorded' in some 60 tracks in 1995 , but, thereafter went underground again, to continue concentration on visual arts as the sculptor Alexander Sokolov..............................................................................................Alejxis thinks maybe the world is now ready for these timbre song waves. Drums built by Alejxis were played to Nelson Mandela at the original London Mandela Concert. Alejxis is most interested in making the thickest skins sing in chordal symphonic alto above related trebles and huge bass........................... In the tracks here there are 45 drums: there's a Bass section of 8 giga-Congas from 30 inches downwards played with wool wrapped lead weighted sticks, a chromatic set of 8 softwood kettles for soft sticks, a set of 10 hand-played afro-Congas bridgeing the top end of the Bass all the way up through to long bodied Bongo sized alto/soprano-Congas, a foursome of Bata drums and of heavy djembes, and, a section of short bodied stick drums........................The chromatic congas and closed Kettles are played in chord type unisons, which is what gives the background trebles and the foreground singing and sometimes shrieking Conga notes....................................................................... The manner of playing is entirely un-latin or of african drumming: where these utilise doubled strokes within a single drum, Alejxis plays synchronised hand-beat/sticks on multiple pairs of drums tuned to chords...............................................................Following the field-recordings, the orchestra was used for a Lesotho Childrens Teaching Theatre, then in Prison Rehab................... Alejxis may get the time to rescuscitate this or another Orchestra as a number 2 orchestra, but now presents on-going digital remastering of the original 45 set, where an amount of 'snaffle' has to be minimized along with hand friction across many square yards of thick bull hides drumheads used...................................................................................................These sounds here began with a knife, an axe, a sledgehammer, full-drift or long heavy iron bar, chainsaws, ropes and 'mucho sudor' -a lot of sweat. ................................................... ........................................................As to chiselling out a drum, a tip: that the cup or gouge chisel, and a big one at that, apart from needing a shaft that is very very long, needs either the making or finding of a gouge that is bevelled the opposite to normal chisels. That way it will always seek to travel back into the interior of the drum, rather than cutting through the shell towards the outside................................................................................................................. Congas already -by their shape- produce an echo. Put your fingers in an upturned conga and click them, and you'll hear the echo. The sculptural shape of the conga determines its sound, as shape does for all other drums. The closed kettle, where the soundwave cannot escape, will, like a double ended taiko, bounce the skin back outwards. A taiko barrel will bounce that much more than a tapering kettle. A kettle produces a shorter and higher note than it's opened and bowed equivalent. It varies with djembes, or straight 'rocket' type drums but the echo from a hardwood conga is that much more 'cutting' and brutal than with a softwood conga. And, those classic closed tapering african drums, the ones with twisted strips holding the two skins decoratively over the shell, are, like the larger Ugandan versions (which are more bulbous) all made of extremely soft wood. So much so that sticks can quickly dent and damage the edges. ....................................................................................................................... The issue of timber is cardinal. Djembes -apart from those made because of its natural shape from the 'pita' or agave, are carved out of semi-hardwood, and so join in this conga issue. Congas you can take as latinized totally- the aim is fierce echo, to get crispest almost metallic timbre, such that plastic and metal shells are used. The more latin desired - the more they are played 'closed' by being placed 'closed' upon the ground, thus raising the pitch. The sounds are instantly recognisable, and, as with all hand drums, become a danger to live bandsets- their timbre interfering so much with other instruments, yet the metallicised latin congas are includable where african softwood drums are less so. Djembes played at the high notes also function well, which is why the west- african music depends on them so much.................................................................................................................. However, djembes, are, like Irish 'bodhrans', possessive of a super-rolling bass characteristic, and this part of them can be tough to control in a recording. As to congas- did a Stradivarius violin get made from a hardwood? No. The timbre is better, if timbre is the aim rather than crisp attack, in the softest timber. In the northern climates that means spruce, in africa it can be what can be called bamboo, that is those pithy pseudo palms, which are soft like a bark rather than a timber.......................................................................................................... '................................................................................................................... For people who love drums, there are stories, like the Nigerian drum you could hear for 200 clicks, made like a huge 'cow' shape. Or as in prehistoric europe, dig a pit next to a bendable tree..stake a full skin over it with a short fat stick underneath it that's attached to heavy skin rope that exits the skin centrally by a central small cut, then get a crowd to bend the tree down and attach the rope, free the tree and ...Boom,you have a giant tuned 'earth-drum' to play to the very heavens, a massive version of an adungu..................................................................................................Mickey Harte did all that politics stuff, meaning, he told us the way the matrilineal age was supersceded by the aryan horse fighters, and, didn't he get as far as showing that it's all gone full circle, how africa that never lost the vibe, by ironical way of slavery then re-exported the lost vibes back even into old europe, thu america : it's like all things, the opposite always is dragged along by what you thought was the 'cool' solution. That slavery, Mickey showed, led to the freeing of a several millenias whole lost influence.......................................................................................... It's the same with the WWII, those who wanted the war thought it would be against russian commies, and send us all back to 'order' and 'class based' and 'property based' society, 'stop the rot of godless revolution'.........- and -........... what happens, women have to go out to work, and thus are freed, all society gets 'modernised' and.......... we had to invent computers that are now empowering everyone as never wished for by those who pushed for that 'regression'.................................................................................................. ...................................................................................ALEXIS: ..............Artista de grabacion independiente sin representar, Alejxis va en busca de colocar un sonido percusivo 'emocional' con una fuerza autocompleta (sin otros instrumentos). Empeze fundador con el grupo 'Tambores Brujos de Brixton' (un barrio inmigrante de Londres) en 1976 con un irlandes y un africano, que tocaron en calle y festival por Inglaterra, saliendo en el BBC por un programa 'Reino Unido Ethnico' varias veces.................................................................................................En El ano siguiente Los Brujos se conviertaron en ser 'La Presencia', haciendo grabaciones de percusion, pero el equipo se fundo despues del rechazo comercial del nascente Discos Virgin, quien pidieron anadicion de chorales, y sugerio una vuelta hacia ellos 10 anyos adelante................................................................................................Asi El grupo se fracturo con los dos demas aislando su interes por la musica posible por instrumentacion de cuerdas, dejando el Alejxis solo en buscar a la musica puramente percusiva. En esa epoca Londres no tenia movi'a de tambores salvo con la 'Fabrica de Tambores' djembe y marimba de un duque de Ghana, El Sidi, pero 'La Presencia' fijaban en el sonido de 'trancia' pulsivo mas centro africano , algo aparte de los ritmos de africa del oeste ya entrando al mundo del norte.............................................................................................. Alejxis seguia solo en intentar superar las necesidades de instrumentos, pasando desde entonces dentro de todo tipo y manera para construir y atunar tambores, hasta que en 1987 se soluciono como resolver su pista hacia el sonido exacto..............................................................................................Alejxis Mientras se traslo hacia el frente sur de Europa, por Almeira, para seguir su otro pasion, bajo el nombre Alexander Sokolov, por esculpir la piedra, una actividad bastante percusivo................................................................................................ Desde los setenta Alejxis esculpia perenialmente muchas arboles para alocarse la manera de liberar su pasion musical por pura percusion, y con su nueva solucion de 1987 sus estudios continuos en forma troncera le sirvia para dar forma a una orchestra completa en 1995. Los grabaciones ahora forman parte de esa orchestra, que Alejxis preservo en una gran seria de 14 albums hypothetico antes de dar la orchestra para ensenacion infantil medio de una maestra africana de Lesotho, y para su rehabilitacion de los de la carcel. Lo que se oye aqui son 45 tambores, en grupos de 6 congas super bajo tumbadores, congas medio de trebles, de altos, y de sopranos, con otros tambores serrados , o para palos, todos graduado en chromatismo de sonido, y tocado asi en seguida con las posibilidades chromaticos. Asi la manera no tiene nada a ver con ni la percusion ni africano ni latino.
Digitalised Sculpture
What is also interesting is that the polemical references to how digital realities will affect art- that is the near free availability of purely abstracted or digital 'tools' since 1995, relate not only to the experiments in sound-sculpture, but these tools also in effect allow for making real sculpture into 'sound', or rather digital record.
On the known level we have now come to the point where I will be able to offer sculpture over the Internet as up-loaded digital files, that is the binary matheticisation of the Plastic or 3-dimensional object. As of today this does not yet arrive at the etherialisation, or creation of holographic and immaterial representation, though this is apparently quite soon likely, but the up-loading for the purpose of re-creation in physical terms does now exist. This means that the old manner whereby Bernini could transpose into a block of marble his modelling from clay- thus changing the boundaries of known Sculpture, or Henry Moore pick a bone off a beach and send it to Italy to be enlarged into a monument for an American plaza, is supersceded. From hereon a digital file, albeit a very large one containing the plastic or 3-dimensional relationships of a sculpture's whole, can be sent to a distant country - if they possess the current meachanical means, and there carved perfectly in situ by a CNC robot ( that is a 'computer numerically controlled' milling machine). Welcome to the brave new world of commerce.
The devaluation of 'sculpture' as an art will of course either become total, whereby your portrait in marble can become nearly as facile as a 'photograph' of you was in say 1834, or else the world will have to also understand that the transposition of the 'model'- of life and nature as in a real personality possessing its face- into the Plastic of Art, can be solely of interest when the humanity of the artist's sensibility captures that which is immaterial but immanent to the personality and the life.
It has long been necessary to return to this theme because of its foundation to the Plastic Art of Sculpture, and personally I should say that not only is the effort that a sculptor makes the source of any sufficient originality, but also go so far as to say that the lack of success or failure in achieving his translation of what he feels and sees into the inert substance of his marble provides, even by these inevitable limits, the essence of the Art. Perfection as we all know , is not human, and the reflection of a living person, of a portrait, cannot anyway subsist any more than in a photograph of you as a teenager subsisting when you are 50, so in sculpture what is needed is to capture the immaterial and physically un-changing aspect of the inner personality.
Can the Digital make the bridge beyond?
It has long interested me whether I could return the -as yet not fully published- 'sound sculpture' back into a visual form. That is to make visible the sound of music. Equally more interesting will be to see if in the future a soundscape could be created from the real physical plastic nature of sculpture? What symphonies could be found? Certainly marble, particularly, creates sound, and this changes , and sometimes too drastically so. Equally in earlier ages, when quarrying, to test blocks for the sane-ness ('sano' ) or lack of it due to degrading fissures, they were suspended by chains in the air, and struck.
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