Jos Smolders – Textuur 2 [ |||| – – – – ]

Dutch composer Jos Smolders, a friend of this site, has a new release out on Portugal’s Crónica Electronica Records.  This is a sample of the text associated with the album, which you can read in full here.

“Each Textuur project is built up in a similar fashion. There are two groups of sound. First there are the collections which consist of samples of the original material. The other group consists of various permutations. The samples from the collections are torn apart into threads of various widths and subsequently rewoven into a new synthetic fabric. Sound is thus stripped from its original value and meaning and resynthesized into a new texture. Each permutation is the result of a fresh approach. Although they are presented in a certain order on the album, you are free to play them in any order you like and even skip some parts. Like the experience I had with Carl Andre’s poems, in this project listeners can investigate at what point the source (as presented in the collections), and the meaning of that source, disappears into the sonic surface it is woven into. Sometimes it completely blends in and becomes an anonymous part of a big whole. At other times, it retains its original shape and most times simultaneously its original meaning. It’s amazing, as you will hear, how persistent meaning of actual words can be.

Listeners are invited to design their own permutation or permutation of the permutation.”