Intrinsic Motion by Richard Garet

The title Intrinsic Motion emphasizes the movement connecting these four aural compositions, which also share similar interests and aesthetic negotiations. Each work emerged from the combinations of various sound sources such as field recordings, found sound appropriations, contact microphone play, feedback, and studio processing. The works in this release explore the communicational diversity of surrounding sound fields, time, pitch, physical acoustics, and the sensory encounter that conveys human experience. Each piece is the outcome of an empirical interaction, and a significant response to the material found within the intermittent activity of listening.

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Touching Extremes (2006): "Intrinsic motion" is a record whose beauty is revealed in the very moment in which we become able to penetrate its many subtle layers. Only a repeated attentive listening in a quiet environment can let us decipher its contents in their essential significance. Richard Garet created these four pieces through "combinations of various sound sources such as field recordings, found sound appropriations, contact microphone play, feedback and studio processing". "For Shimpei Takeda" is a fulgid example of Garet's poetic: imperceptible frequency modulations intertwine in religious silence, then it rapidly cuts to birds singing in a garden and distant road sounds that, once treated, become similar to a nocturnal backwash, the piece ending with a hypnotic feedback blemished by a more evident, if scarcely decipherable rustling noise. "Ascending" fuses overacute waves, some of them pretty near the ultrasonic range, to additional field recordings (water and barking dogs can be heard) then it gradually starts to alter - probably reinforce - our sense of equilibrium through a progressively denser, thicker amassment of splendid drones bringing the piece to its completion. While the initial "Endless scenery" is a sort of muted meditation about the uselessness of words in trying to define what a "sound" is, and a preparation for our brain to be delivered from preconceptions, the 25'46" of "Field of monochrome" combine the album's basic ingredients in a wonderful succession of solitary experiences and faraway echoes of a surrounding life which still has some significance in terms of aural colours, but not anymore as far as intellectual motivations are concerned. Throughout this track - and the whole record - time seems to freeze in a delicate sequence of compelling, profound memory snapshots. (Massimo Ricci)

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Earlabs (2006): (Note: I advice to listen to this record on a silent environment, although listening to it with everyday sounds in the back -voices and office sounds in general-, is also an interesting experience) Luigi Russolo, was a great Italian artist and sound art pioneer, who developed his work through painting, poetry and later sound. He is well known for building noise-making devices and mainly for his writing pieces about sound and music. Russolo (alongside all the Italian futurists) is considered one of the pioneers of 
electroacoustic music and sound art, and today when sound experimentation has become an enormous common place for artists and musicians, his work is as valid as it was 93 years ago. On his "L'Arte de Rumori" manifesto, published on 1913, Russolo said: "At first the art of music sought and achieved purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. 
Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound. This musical evolution is paralleled by the multipication of machines, which collaborate with man on every front. Not only in the roaring atmosphere of major cities, but in the country too, which until yesterday was totally silent, the machine today has created such a variety and rivalry of noises that pure sound, in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses any feeling. " Like Russolo, Richard Garet, comes from a painting background, and his work is a mixture of machine-like and environmental sounds that blend greatly into an intense and yet subtle line. 
Intrinsic Motion is the first solo release of Richard Garet on Nonvisualobjects (the label created by Heribert Friedl and Raphael Moser) who have previously released material by Richard Chartier, Heribert Friedl and Steve Roden among others, and it's clearly one of finest and more carefully constructed records that I have had the pleasure to listen in a while. The definition of "awareness' on www.wikipedia.com is: "In biological psychology, awareness describes a human or animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event. Awareness does not necessarily imply understanding, just an ability to be conscious of, feel or perceive. ...Awareness may be focused on an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. Awareness provides the raw material from which animals develop qualia, or subjective ideas about their experience." Intrinsic Motion is such a subtle and austere construction, that it barely meets your awareness radio, but the sounds are so involving and the structures are so beautifully placed in time, that your attention and focus simply begin to follow the events that are acoustically suggested through 56 minutes. Being aware is something that goes beyond our thoughts and emotions, awareness is a place where we contemplate and, like children, feel amused with our surroundings and whatever happens there. This is exactly what occurs with Intrinsic Motion, one of my favorite records of 2006 and one of the most interesting and intriguing experiences that I have had in a while.
 (David Velez)

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GAZ-ETA (2006): Sound/video artist and painter Richard Garet gets a full release all by himself following his excellent contribution to the "Territorium" compilation of earlier this year. "Intrinsic Motion" is a carefully gathered audio piece that takes equal parts from field recordings, microphone play, certain notions of feedback and the all popular studio processing. Just when you thought the entire CD would be high frequency doodling [as is the case on about half of the first piece "Endless Scenery"], Garet decides to pull a rabbit out of a hat. The following piece "For Shimpei Takeda" features a bunch of chirping birds, wind sounds [or was that a subway car whooshing by?] and delicate sparkling of haunting sound. Since variety is the spice of life, the remaining two pieces feature everything from deadly quiet passages, through to more squelching, high-pitched noise to what appears to be a drone-like church organ that is spun in a loop. Another fine release from the Austrian folk who love minimal music.
 (Tom Sekowski)

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Smallfish (2006): After appearing on the 4th Non Visual Objects release, Richard Garet now claims a full CD of his own with the wonderful 'Intrinsic Motion'. Constructed from field recordings, appropriated found sounds and contact mics along with studio processing, he's delivered an enthralling collection of pieces that are at once completely tangible, yet abstract and experimental at the same time. The sounds are layered in a way that allows the drone and texture elements to drift throughout the compositions, subtle weaving in and out of the mix and keeping you engaged all the way through. There's a haunting quality that comes to the fore and although the sounds feel kind of alien they have a surprising degree of warmth as well. At times it becomes a little more high frequency based, but essentially, this is a great release for fans of deep drone music... however it's been created. Excellent, of course, and definitely gets a recommendation from me. (Mike Oliver)

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Paris Transatlantic (2006):The releases on Heribert Friedl's non visual objects label are dressed for understatement: cardboard fold-over covers, suitably oblique imagery, consistency in (mostly lowercase) font and design. It makes for canny branding, hailing the listener conversant in quietist sound art, but with each release 'of a piece', your response is predetermined: nvo titles are sometimes great, but rarely surprising. And so it is with Intrinsic Motion, Richard Garet's first disc for the label, and an extension of his exploration into the spaces between sound and video art and painting. The liner notes have each piece on the disc resulting from "an empirical interaction" - but then, what sound art isn't these days? - rather more problematic is the content of the "four aural compositions", which belabour their point via field recording activity (birds and cityscapes), deep bass rumble, high pitched tone float, assorted cracklings and rustlings, etc. It's all very quiet and understated, very much in the style of lowercase composition, and it's genuinely engaging when it touches on unalloyed beauty; "For Shimpei Takeda" features a small, disengaged melody that's quite gorgeous, particularly when bedded down amongst the usual rattle and hum. But it's not all that engaging, which begs the question, how much "austere loveliness" is enough? Long may Garet quest on into near silence, but don't expect revelation anytime soon.
(Jon Dale)

Richard Garet is a multimedia artist based in NYC. He holds an MFA from Bard College, NY. Richard Garet's approach to working with sound focuses on interacting with materials' sonic properties as both source and instrument. Such materials are amplified EMF emissions, modified audiocassettes, dysfunctional tape players, circuit boards, sonification of light, and computer processing among others.

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