18:36 MECHA / ORGA -Yiorgis Sakellariou-
( Orila 2012)
’18:36′ is the second release on 2012 by Greek artist Yiorgis Sakellariou and his project MECHA / ORGA after the publication of ’40:31′ earlier this year. The information on the liner notes is scarce and vague but I want to highlight a couple of fragments:
‘Field recordings that took place in various countries (Belgium, Greece, Lithuania, England) between 2010 and 2012, were used for the composition of this piece. Segments of the recorded material were selected according to the needs of this composition which took place in Klaipeda, Lithuania between March and April of 2012’
’18:36 is divided in four chapters, through which the combination of industrial sound and sound produced without any human activity is dominant.’
On ’18:36′ sound seems to be addressed primarily as a textural matter: the capture and eventual processing of the field recordings seems to affect the sounds in their reverberative and volumetric qualities; I’d refer to this approach as some sort of frontal and vertical flattening.
This emphasis made by the artist in the textural aspect seems to be equally pertinent and successful: the spectator is immersed in some sort of a place or state where his threshold of awareness becomes more sensible and acute: the listener’s hearing is induced to a very responsive level where both the universal and the particular can occur simultaneously, right next to the listener’s perception.
On another formal aspect, the artist seems to be considering sudden change as a very important element in regard of how time and temporalities should be dealt with for him; the spectator listen to sounds that are slowly evolving building universes of events and sonorities when suddenly something happens and the listener is unexpectedly immersed in a new universe. This ‘sudden change’ approach works greatly with the textural approach to reverberation and volume presented here keeping the listener in a state of constant alert and transversal awareness where beautiful images arise.
The work of Yiorgis Sakellariou and his project MECHA / ORGA is one that the listeners of musique concrete could follow with high reward: his formal approach to time and physicality are quite intimate and personal deriving in unique sonorities that compellingly creates a world of sound where everything is presented on a tactile level of proximity that allows for change and motion to strongly manifest.
-John McEnroe
[Yiorgis Sakellariou, photo author Fab On The Moon]
-John McEnroe
