John Duncan
Infrasound - Tidal
All Questions

Available through the Helen Scarsdale Agency: $16.00

For an artist whose prolific career is dotted with dozens of exceptional collaborative efforts, John Duncan found himself in uncharted territory in construction his recent production Infrasound - Tidal from the audio sources supplied by the Australian sound artist Densil Cabrera. In his previous works, the process of testing the self and battling the will has been a central theme to Duncan's work. Typically, Duncan has manifested this in pitting equally strong forces against each other within a crucible of intense psychological, aesthetic, and / or conceptual pressures, whether that be in the transgressive confrontation of sexual and violent taboos expressed in such work as Scare in which Duncan fired blanks at unsuspecting participants, or in the reconciliation of aesthetic proclivities found in pieces like Home Unspeakable, a collaboration with Bernhard Günter, which pushed Günter's already quiet aesthetics into a black hole of gaping silences. However, Cabrera did not seek an open collaboration with Duncan, as Duncan politely states in the liner notes that "he appeared not to be interested in knowing anything at all about who I was." Rather, Cabrera's focus had been of a scientific nature in articulating and amplifying tidal, seismic, and barometric data into a raw, rudimentary collection of sounds. Duncan interpreted the scientific approach to sound as a removal of the self and used that as an allegorical framework which informed how he should proceed in composing the work. Thus, Duncan intentionally avoids anything intense within Infrasound - Tidal favoring a demeanor of cold detachment.

Infrasound - Tidal opens with sustained tones which subtly expand into interlacing filaments of purified sound. These drones flicker softly like controlled feedback or sinewave modulations but are ultimately more compelling than the contemporary no-input mixing work of Toshimaru Nakamura. Admittedly, it is difficult to discern what these drones may have in common with the source material; however, Duncan's goal is not demonstrative, rather it aptly parallels the rigors and monotony of scientific research, as a form of data which requires concentrated listening to perceive the minutiae. In doing so, Duncan implodes the perception of time, in which the arbitrary 12 minute timeframe of this opening section could have lasted 12 seconds or 1200 years. Thick gray drones and distant white noise ambience maintain that temporal dislocation and stoically mimic the scientific process as an isolated practice, occasionally punctuated by scribbles of gritty, indeterminant activity that may or may not relate to some wondrous discovery. While not as immediate as the recent masterpiece Phantom Broadcast, John Duncan's Infrasound - Tidal is a compelling if hermetic work, reflecting on the psychological impulses into science both as an aesthetic and an agenda.