EARS HAVE EYES // Episode 32
Airing Wednesday, October 9, 2024 at 8 pm MST
on CJSW 90.9 FM, New Adventures in Sound Art, & Golden Co-Op Radio
THE STRANGE SOUNDS OF MINOR PLANETS:
silence, noise, rotation, pulsation
FEATURED ARTIST:
Dr. Tibor Donath
GUEST ARTISTS:
ChillArt
Joseph Biro (Acidbushman)
EARS HAVE EYES is a monthly sound art radio program airing on CJSW 90.9 FM in Calgary/Mohkinstsis, Golden Co-op Radio in Golden, BC, and NAISA Radio in South River, Ontario. You can listen to podcasts of previous episodes here.
The following text is written by our featured artist, Dr. Tibor Donath, by way of introduction to the radio show he programmed for EARS HAVE EYES.
Intro – Track 1. Iris Gaia
The introductory etude is by Joseph Biro (Acidbushman). Joseph is a Hungarian experimental sound artist. His solo musical attitude has two extreme far sides, although both are minimalist and low-fi: the free meditative improvisation with soft pure unmodified acoustic instruments and the noisy repetitive electronic samples experiments. In harmony with John Cage’s thought, everything can be regarded as music in its right place in space and time. Coincidences of Nature’s phenomena are the most important conductors of the ever-existing musical texture of the Universe.
In today’s broadcast, silence, noise, rotation and pulsation are the main themes of a forthcoming and as yet unreleased sound art album, many of whose excerpts will be heard for the first time in this programme.
The artists featured in today’s broadcast first met in Hungary in the early 2000s at various jam sessions in Békéscsaba, a southern corner of the Great Hungarian Plain. In 2007, the Drum Wednesday Society was founded, which for a decade ran a drum circle on Wednesday nights in a local nightclub, where it promoted the love of rhythm among young people with all kinds of percussion instruments and other noise-making devices. An artistic group of 10 to 15 classical and electronic musicians, joy drummers, music fans and music teachers, it has been involved in the release of dozens of music albums over the past 15 years.
Joseph Biro was the president of the art society, the driving force behind the whole formation, DJ, drummer, language teacher and today he is still a member of many musical formations, from noise music (Free Tapes), through folk music (Okoros Trio) to esoteric-punk experimental music (Body Meta).
Track 2. – Kazoo Whale
This minor planet is home to the Little Prince’s favourite animal, the kazoo nose whale. The kazoo whale loves the cold, and the planet is covered in an arctic-cold sea full of tiny crustacean-like creatures that are the whales’ main food. In the middle of each year, the whales leave their polar habitat and swim to the tropical waters of the planet to give birth to their calves. They can travel huge distances, singing in a kazoo-like voice and often stopping to rest and breed. However, they do not feed while migrating, but never stop singing, and can lose up to half their body weight en route.
The artist responsible for today’s selection, Dr. Tibor Donath, was secretary of the Drum Wednesday art society mentioned at the beginning of the programme for 10 years while working as a journalist. Much later, as a lawyer, he started a podcast on labour law and while editing episode 4, he thought to jazz up the edited show with unique sound effects and self-produced electronic music. That’s basically where his sound art career as Dr. don Ath started, he gradually abandoned his electronic music roots and became a manipulator of ecological noise, and a year later, in 2020, he founded his art studio SynthXLoop Audio Arts, which has since been operating primarily as a recording studio and publishing house. Since its inception, the non-profit organisation has promoted inspired autonomous sound art, whereby the inhabitants of a geographical area can show what they do with the sounds they are used to in their environment through a sound archive. To this end, it organises regular tours in Hungary, putting professional sound recorders in the hands of professionals and amateurs to show them, through their field recordings, what sounds are interesting to them. They are then introduced to the realm of sound manipulation and effects, how to edit these field recordings, how to create simple sound effects and sound installations. It’s a mission that brings together sound artists, sound designers, multidisciplinary artists who also work regularly with sound.
The album, Minor PLANETS , which will be released at the end of the year, invites listeners to immerse themselves in the rich imaginary soundscapes of minor planets where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince would like to live. Emulating the sounds of insect species, birds, reptiles, mammals, seas, rivers and volcanoes, with the help of folk instruments, dry and wet whistles, jaw harps (doromb), kazoo and kalimba. This time, through live act performances using recorded digital and analogue effects, the artist offers an intimate insight into the everyday rhythms of life on minor planets.
The soundscape of Minor PLANETS was inspired solely by Dr don Ath’s one-hour evening relaxation walks. The walks were prescribed by his doctors to treat his high blood pressure from the stress of his legal work. He listened to these 6-25 minute sonic installations every evening while walking and recovered from his hypertension in six months.
Track 3. – Geyser heaven
This/The next minor planet is home to a number of hot-water, steam-cloud-spewing lakes and bubbling mud ponds. The Little Prince can spend hours gazing at the geyser he calls Big Shot Blue, a heat source that shoots its jet of water and steam up to an incredible seventy metres. It erupts every thirty minutes and lasts less than nine minutes, with the spectacle and the geyser’s booming song.
Track 4. – Six-eyed Slurper
This/The next minor planet is named after the six-eyed slurping spider. The spider was discovered by the Little Prince in cracks and gaps in cellar doors and other ancient walls. The spider sits in the opening of its long, up to half a metre long, tubular web of dense cobwebs, lurking in wait for its prey of small insects, while it rubs its outstretched legs together, making a slurping sound like a straw sipping a soft drink.
Track 5. – Drink of the Gods
The minor planet is the primary entrance to the afterlife imagined by the ancient Huns. The Little Prince accidentally found the river, which he named the Hun Door, flowing down from the mountains into the valley. Its waters are rusty, poisonous and deadly. Legend has it that the poisoned water of the river killed Attila, King of the Huns. The king was killed in his sleep by his wife, Krimhilda, who dripped water from the river into his ears. The Little Prince once discovered that the water from the poisoned river of the little planet was used by the gods as a lie-testing potion when they drank it. If they lied, they lost their voices and could not speak for a year.
Track 6. – Idyllic wild boars
This minor planet is dominated by wild boars, so any hunting here is an act of terrorism. Pig-headed officials in smart suits and ties impose harsh death sentences on terrorists who wander stealthily through the dense undergrowth of the forests, their lives filled with anxious anticipation and fear. The adrenaline rush when they spot a huge wild boar and the subsequent cautious approach is what makes this hunt so exciting. According to The Little Prince, wild boars are wonderful creatures, elusive and cunning, renowned for their impressive size and strength. Wild boars can weigh up to 300kg, making them a formidable opponent for any hunter. So every hunt is a true test of skill and patience. It is not uncommon here that at the end of the hunt it is not the boars but the hunters who are laid out.
Track 7. – Second Bowl
The sound artist for the last sound installation of the programme is ChillArt, a Hungarian sound artist, sound therapist, vice-principal of a high school in Budapest and a lover of sound bowls. In 2004, she was introduced to the mystique of sound baths and sound bowls. In 2018, she began using sound bowls as a sound therapy tool and developed her expertise in the treatment of sleep disorders to a professional level. Her album Super Sound Bowls contains sounds that promote colourful dreaming…
About Second Bowl:
“The silence of the Universe is pervaded by a multitude of vibrations. Close your eyes, flow with the frequency of the waves. Feel the interplay of colours lurking in the darkness… the sustaining power of red, the freshness of orange, the serenity of yellow, the all-pervading calm and harmony of green, the purity of blue, the soaring of violet… I am surrounded by the radiance of white. Float on the Ocean of Calm.”
Thank you to the artists & listeners!
Special thanks to CJSW.
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