"Bartok" is the seventh in an ongoing series of "composer" releases by Cloudland Blue Quartet, which aim to take pieces by various composers (previous albums have featured treatments of works by Satie, Cage, Beethoven, Schoenberg/Webern/Berg, Haydn and Wagner) and warp them into something completely new, whilst retaining elements of the "DNA" of the original works.
"Bartok" was created in November 2022 in the midst of a complete changeover of the Crispycat Studio, a time of much stress indeed but which was eventually gotten through.
The final day, on which the bonus tracks were created, also marked the recording of last year's "Disquietmusik VI" LP.
The pieces started out as treatments of the slow movement from Bartok's 1st string quartet, the results of which were deemed to be "not music" by the Exec Producer.
Two days later some Tbilisi ambience was added to proceedings. This from the diary: "I thought the Bartok stuff was fairly rubbish to be honest but the addition of the Field Recordings and the chance juxtapositions they produce, makes for reasonably interesting listening - and so, this morning, two very evil sounding slices of ambience were created."
The next day's entry gave this note: "On Monday night, Anne opined it "wasn't music". Now, playing it again with the Field Recordings added, all of a sudden it's deemed "quite good". Field Recordings eh? Gotta love 'em."
Next day, I decided to add treatments of various Bartok solo piano pieces to proceedings, along with snippets of short wave radio.
Writing this almost 6 months later, I can see from the files on the hard drives, that those "original versions" of the final thing were abandoned, for reasons not recorded in the diary and so, lost in the mists of time and the final versions, heard here, were created two days later but, again, not mentioned in the diary.
On the final day, as well as recording "Disquietmusik VI" for release in December 2022, I noted this in the diary: "Work too on Bartok, creating two new clean mixes without the field recordings and shortwave radio - taking it back to the "it's not music" (c) The Executive Producer statement of last week - but now with both string quartet and piano elements, rather than just the former."
As with the previous "composer" release, "Wagner", the original pieces have been slowed, manipulated and treated to leave only the barest element of Bartok's work, in fact, for this LP, only the reverb from the slowed and treated pieces has been used and this has then been overlaid with the field recordings and short wave radio.
The bonus tracks included in the download bundle are the "clean" mixes created on the final day of work on the project.
credits
released May 5, 2023
"Bartok" is the 45th soundscapes album from Cloudland Blue Quartet (Crispycat 2305 - 5 May 2023)
Credits
Samples, field recordings, short wave radio, treatments, cover (“Bartok 3", 28 November 2022) and production by David Reilly for Crispycat Recordings
Created at Crispycat Studio, Edinburgh, UK, 21, 23, 25, 27, 28 November 2022.
Based on the following pieces by Bela Bartok
String Quartet
No.1 in A minor, op.7 - I, Lento
Solo Piano Pieces
The First Term At The Piano, Sz 53, 3 Dialogue Moderato
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 1, 3 Quasi Moderato
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 1, 9 Song Adagio
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 3, 10 Funeral Song, Largo
For Children, Sz. 42, Vol 4, 34 Farewell, Adagio
Improvisations On Hungarian Peasant Songs, Sz 74, 7, Sostenuto, rubato. A la memoire de Claude Debussy
Two Elegies, Op.8b, Sz.41, 1, Grave
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