Anat Spiegel & Henry Vega — Wormsongs
As well as enabling live manipulations of his SuperCollider instruments, Vega's laptop technology also receives the classically-trained operatic tones of Amsterdam's Anat Spiegel as she recites fragments of the texts. Her sung syllables and sentences are then re-output and manipulated to create streams of indecipherable operatic chatter flowing over a bed of electronics. Consequently the optimistic mission in the texts is hidden, leaving the real-time musical communion between human and machine to demonstrate a harmonious relationship with technology.
Harmony is one thing that's lacking from the genuinely strange music the pair have evolved here. Apparently based on some religious song styles, both players almost always stick to the same note throughout each track. For the cut-up voice this can often create a kind of speaking-in-tongues effect, while the live electronics either extend the note into a drone or repeat regularly in minimalist style, sometimes with cycling clicks adding the subtlest of small regular rhythms.
The consistent monotony, while ensuring most of the individual pieces sound so unusual also makes them all sound so alike, where the odd foreign object, like the percussion of Bart De Vrees on 'Light Code', stands out a mile. His gentle brushing provides relief from the otherwise austere and sober surroundings.
By marrying its implicit concept with such pared down performance parameters, Wormsongs comes across like a dry academic exercise. Despite the sound design of Vega's instruments being exquisitely sonorous and Spiegel's rich voice both controlled and confident their confluence always seems to travel the same straight line.