Top Bar
Musique Machine Logo Home ButtonReviews ButtonArticles ButtonBand Specials ButtonAbout Us Button
SearchGo Down
Search for  
With search mode in section(s)
And sort the results by
show articles written by  
 Review archive:  # a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Anat Spiegel & Henry Vega - Wormsongs [Artek - 2011]

Henry Vega, the New York born electroacoustic composer currently residing in The Hague, deals in a convoluted concept with Wormsongs. Inspired by the 'social futurist' Max More, he takes a selection of texts extolling the utopian belief that technological advances will eventually make us all immortal and sets about creating a song cycle using just a single voice and a laptop.

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.

Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5Rating: 2 out of 5

Russell Cuzner
Latest Reviews

Anat Spiegel & Henry Vega - Worms...
Henry Vega, the New York born electroacoustic composer currently residing in The Hague, deals in a convoluted concept with Wormsongs. Inspired by the 'social...
240226   Stephen O‘Malley - Spheres ...
200226   100 Tears - 100 Tears( Blu Ray)
200226   Garden Of Love, - Garden Of L...
200226   Blood Dolls - Blood Dolls( Bl...
190226   Various Artists - So High I'v...
190226   D.A.M. - Inside The Wreckage
190226   Senso - Senso( Blu Ray)
190226   Columbia Noir # 7: Made In Br...
180226   Brutal Shift - Pain Has Broug...
180226   Jakob The Liar - Jakob The Li...
Latest Articles

Crude ‘n’ Hope-corroding Wall...
Back in 2024, I got my first taste of Absurd Reality, and I was so impressed by how crude and nasty its take on walled noise was. Behind the project is South...
290126   Crude ‘n’ Hope-corroding ...
231225   Creepy Images Books - Killer Art
221225   Best Of 2025 - Music, Sound &...
041225   The Spectral Sounds of The Pr...
281025   Michael Hurst Interview - Unb...
071025   Xiphos - The Rise And Fall Of...
030925   Third Window Films - A Label ...
130825   HNW fest- Barcelona- 12th Apr...
250725   Raté interview - Walled-in F...
180625   Matthew Holmes - Of razor-sha...
Go Up
(c) Musique Machine 2001 -2025. Twenty four years of true independence!! Mail Us at questions=at=musiquemachine=dot=comBottom