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Francisco Lopez
Live in San Francisco
23five007
REVIEWS:
The Wire
April 2005, Issue 254
As with Live in 'S-Hertogenbosch(Francisco Lopez's concert
recording on Bottrop-Boy), Live in San Francisco comes
with a black blindfold. His concerts usually take place under strict
regime of sensory deprivation. Having blindfolded his audience in
a darkened auditorium, sometimes he also immures himself and his
equipment in a black tent. Blindfolding oneself for home listening
seems an absurd proposition; nonetheless, I've listened to Live
in San Francisco both with and without blindfold. The principal
benefit of using it is that distractions are kept to a minimum.
But awareness of time passing is also reduced, and one can submit
more fully to the music.
What sets Lopez apart from most other electronics / noise composers
is, essentially, his boldness of conception and the teasing of ambiguity
of his materials. The dense, granular sounds he likes to use (small
and large grains, some soft, some hard) are sculpted into striking
forms, and it's often difficult to tell whether the material is
mechanistic or organic in origin. The first piece here, "Live
at The Lab - Hexaphonic" is a whisper of noise which gradually
gets louder, until it plunges into a deep and darkly resonant chasm.
Eventually it emerges and rises again in volume, achieving an almost
orchestral degree of complexity. Having reached a peak of howling,
ear-scouring activity, it stops -- there is no detournement, no
coda, just an abrupt termination of the signal. In terms of structure,
this could hardly be simpler, but it's surprisingly elegant and
very, very effective.
11 months later, in 2001, Lopez returned to San Francisco. His performance
at 3feetofftheground comprises the second track. It follows on immediately
from the first with soft, rhythmically spaced detonations, like
distant thunder. Soft noise, especially in Lopez's hands, is a strange
phenomenon, rich, subtle, and diffuse - and, above all, alluring.
This is a longer piece than the first and its structure is more
elaborate, its unfolding more gradual. But what's pleasing is how
well the two tracks fit together, how effectively they work as one,
as though they were conceived as such. -- Brain Marley
Igloo Magazine
Volume 20a
At Sonar 2003 the most fascinating live performance by far was the
limited audience piece by Francisco Lopez at Barcelona's Contemporary
Art Museum. He had the audience blindfolded and lying on square
ottomans in the complete darkness. Let's just say it was an altering
mind/body experience that this reviewer will never forget. Big thanks
to San Fran's 23five for making the extra effort to document a precursor
piece (that is packaged with, sans instructions, a blindfold). The
work is a haze of swarming crickets, a serrated blend of industrial
drone. The first piece "Live at the Lab – Hexaphonic"
was performed live in the Summer of Y2K. Building and growing it
crescendos with a metallic drop and just withers away softly, like
a cartoon'ish shy machine. But again, at about ten minutes into
this eighteen minute piece, it floods the room with flaring treble,
like some massive periscopic field device taking over a major city
by night. There's something rather ambitious about the assumed size
of the sound as it just oozes all over everything and caresses the
hallways and crevices of the space it is released into. "Live
at 3feetofftheground" starts off like a distant thunderstorm
with a fine, soft hiss like grassy rain migrating through the air.
Something about this recording gets me anxious, and I'm a laid back
guy. It just quivers for these segments and then you're in the fryer,
sizzling like the edge of a raucous cymbal. Lopez plays with the
elements in a sensory play of sonic, vibrating revelry that doesn't
let go of you. -- TJ Norris
Dusted Magazine
September 11, 2005
Francisco Lopez often blindfolds his concert audience – cloaking
them in cloth and sound, without any distractions. It's as close
as an artist comes to holding his fans hostage. The deft musique
concrete composer can fray nerves with the mundane: insect fields,
industrial yards, trade winds, sprinklers, freeway traffic, freezers,
etc. As many of his 130-odd records attest, he can make the natural
sound utterly extraterrestrial and alienating without much effort
or processing, and turn silence into some of the loudest, most intense
noise out there. A blindfolded listen of his work could mimic the
imagination's pessimism and dread - a new moon wilderness - or it
could result in the Stockholm Syndrome and sympathy for wherever
Lopez takes you.
San Francisco sound art label and collective 23five compiled such
moments from two of Lopez's San Francisco concerts and even packaged
blindfolds inside the CDs. This album collects two 23five-hosted
performances from 2000 and '01 at The Lab and 3feetofftheground,
respectively. Maybe the home blindfold practice should be done with
every album; hasn't television and print dominated the public's
perception of music for too many years? No offense to Derek Bailey,
but perhaps sight depravation really is the best way to listen to
music.
That said, it is difficult for me to hear Lopez's two performances
on Live in San Francisco and not be troubled by memories
of a Sacramento freeway accident that I survived a few weeks ago.
I recall spending an hour in an emergency ward's hallway with several
other broken bodies, all waiting for a doctor. I stared at the ceiling
light and struggled to recall any memory and songs, catching slight
fragments and worrying about newspaper deadlines. I could do nothing
but let my ears pick up distant conversations: coughing, footsteps,
walkie talkies…anything to take my mind off the pieces of
glass in my forehead. It felt like I was waiting for a nothing that
would never happen.
I revisited that dread when I listened to Live again. Lopez seeks
an "absolute concrete music" where he focuses on the music's
extremes of cacophony and silence. Both performances begin with
long, ominous stretches of silence and faint buzzing, eliciting
sadistic anticipation – a common trend in musique concrete.
Lopez opts for the drone, one that sounds like a cross between a
cricket field and a dishwasher. The minutes drift by, the din's
volume and frequency builds and builds until the insects and machinery
shriek together, as if crushed the Earth's gravitation pull. Lopez
gradually eases the assault down to silence; the images my mind
clung to during the past 20-odd minutes mercifully vanish with it.
-- Cameron Macdonald
Vital Weekly
Number 460, Week 5
The discography of senor Lopez is an extensive one, but only a few
deal with live recordings. The only one that springs to mind is
his Live In 'S-Hertogenbosch on Bottrop-boy, which came,
just like this new live recording, with a blindfold (which he insists
that the audience should wear). Francisco Lopez live is something
different than Francisco Lopez studio. In the latter he carefully
constructs pieces of silent music, almost inaudible, that only start
to make sense if the listener takes over control by adjusting volume,
bass, mid and treble. The listener doesn't have this control in
the live situation and here Lopez goes for the all out attack on
the listener, who, with his blindfold, can do nothing else than
sit back and listen. This CD has two pieces (rather unusual for
Lopez), both recorded in San Francisco. The first one is from 2000
and starts right away with an oppressive wall of sound, until things
collapse with great dramatic care. From there the proceedings start
all over again, building up yet again another dramatic crescendo.
When it stops, the sounds is literally sucked away. The second track
is a different one. Much less present in the space, this is a softer
piece, although it doesn't come anywhere near his studio CDs. Here
too it can be noted that there is quite a dramatic built, with abrupt
changes. Most likely this is built from field recordings made in
the jungle, but with an undefinable background drone being present.
Two entirely different performances, but both bear the signature
of Lopez. And it's great stuff. -- Frans de Waard
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