MR MUTT Records

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Description

Recorded live in Rimini Italy at the After Radio event 18 September 2000.

All music produced & performed by Robin Rimbaud. Copyright & publishing by Scannerdot Publishing 2003.

Publicphono was recorded live as part of Prix Italia in Italy in 2000. The Prix Italia is the oldest and most prestigious international radio, television and web competition. It awards prizes for quality productions in the fields of drama (single plays and serials), documentaries (culture and current affairs), the performing arts (television) and music (radio). Among the innumerable personalities who, in the course of the years, have entered their works: writers like Jean Anouilh, Riccardo Bacchelli, Heinrich Böll, Bertholt Brecht, Italo Calvino, Jean Cocteau, Eduardo De Filippo, Marguerite Duras, Friedrich Dürrenmat, Umberto Eco, Max Frisch, John Osborne, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Françoise Sagan; directors such as David Attenborough, Ermanno Olmi, Sidney Pollack, Francesco Rosi, Roberto Rossellini, John Schlesinger, Andrej Wajda, Krzystof Zanussi. Among the winners are equally illustrious figures: Samuel Beckett, Ingmar Bergman, Peter Brook, René Clair, Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog, Peter Greenaway, Eugène Ionesco, Ken Loach, Harold Pinter, Dylan Thomas. For the 52nd edition a homage was paid to the medium with which it was born, a day dedicated entirely to the world of radio. After Radio was the title of a conference offering a reflection on the changes brought about by the digital revolution and the Internet on the technology, the use and the professions that operate in the radio sector. Scanner was commissioned to create a live concert using the public speaker system on the sea front of Rimini, which was broadcast over 20 km of beach to anyone within reach of the sea. Event curated by Roberto Paci Dalò. This CD is the complete concert that was heard on 18 September 2000. — Mr Mutt, Press Release

Reviews

In a short edition of only 200 copies the first release on Mr. Mutt Records is what will certainly become an incredible live cdr series put out by Italian composers known as tu m'. Recorded live at Prix Italia's After Radio events in Rimini Italy in late 2000, Scanner(Robin Rimbaud) was commissioned to create this piece to be broadcast on their public speaker system. His use of sampling radio broadcasts beckoned back to the establishment of the 52 year old organization. An obvious complement to the festive occasion had Scanner presenting the work for which he has been grown best known for – combining sounds and voice scans and electronics to be heard in a public forum. A re-processing of older spoken word recordings taken from their original source and now born as a horizon line for the cross section between documentarian technique and aesthetic fare. Rimbaud has prepared a new colloquialism, a merge of vocabularies. This particular piece was broadcast on the beach to anyone in earshot out into the sea. The sheer fact that the broadcast took place in a natural environment further deconstructs its initial context. There is a blend of sultry Italian tongues and steely Kraftwerkian voiceboxes (minus the funk). This is a very serious, almost clinical, recording that is bathed in a dramatic soundscape of light vibes and tactile vibrations, filters and the unfamiliar. Scanner has become synonymous as a creator of recordings derived from man-made technology sound sources and their junction with the human voice. On Publicphono he has truly used the spirit of silence to great effect. At times the illusion takes me on a trip from NASA to an Italian airport to archaic newsreels. In other moments this recalls some of the best work from the early/mid 90s EM:T label. This is a pure exploration of the nuances of contemporary electronics as chamber music. There is a uniquely passionate and disjointed symphonic quality about one half hour into this 40 minute single track which travels in an out of private and public space. Rimbaud has inaugurated a new era in genre-bending with his Y2K recording. — TJ Norris, Vital Weekly

Publicphono is the first release for a new label run by Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli of tu m'. It was recorded live in 2000 as part of the 52nd annual Prix Italia, a longstanding international, and interdisciplinary, competition. Scanner's performance took place using the public speaker system spread out over 20 kilometres of beach in Rimini. For this piece, Scanner decided to pay homage to radio, from which the Prix Italia was born, using their vast archive of recordings as source material. What we get is a 40 minute piece of shifting ambient electronic music, permeated throughout by voices from radio broadcasts now long past (with subjects, all spoken in Italian, ranging from the liturgical to the profane), musical interludes, cut up, processed, time-stretched, manipulated in any number of ways, or sometimes left alone. A mood of historical mystery informs the work as a whole, as if, in the very act of listening, we are uncovering lost documents, revealing secrets, uncovering conspiracies. But it also sounds quite dated; the time stretching, the electronic manipulations, tones and timbres sound so much like what we have heard on Scanner's previous works, that I began to wonder just how far he has been pushing himself lately, to discover new ground, to take his musical ideas and innovations, his transformations of, and commentaries on, the signals and voices travelling throughout our everyday spaces, and pursue them still further. And yet Publicphono is still a nice work; it just failed to bring anything significantly new to the table for me to consider. Or maybe I'm just bitter at not having been there on the beach to experience the broadcast first hand, with the rays of the sun, the sound of the sea, sand under the feet, all blending with what must have seemed like an apocryphal broadcast, a ghost performance, from no one to the unknowing. — Richard di Santo, Incursion

Mr. Mutt records est un label créé par le duo électroacoustique Tu m'. Cette première publication, limitée à 200 exemplaires, présente l'enregistrement d'une performance de Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) commissionnée en 2000 par le "Prix Italia" pour rendre hommage au media qui a vu naitre ce prestigieux concours : la radio. Publicophono a ainsi été diffusé sur plus de vingt kilomètres en utilisant le réseau de haut-parleurs public de la plage de Rimini. On sait le travail de Scanner marqué par une réflexion sur l'humanité et les rapports qu'elle entretient avec la technologie : Publicophono en est une illustration. Elle se présente comme une combinaison de voix et de conversations (en italien) captées, de samples et de vieilles bandes radios, de motifs électroniques souvent mélodiques, parfois plus abstraits, presque cliniques. Sa construction laisse se succéder plusieurs mouvements (tableaux ?) parsemés de renvois et son caractère dramatique, quasiment romanesque, l'identifie immédiatement à une pièce radiophonique. A partir d'un maelstrom sonore puisant dans le passé et le commun, Scanner reconstruit un univers intemporel et insensé : s'il y a un scénario, il ne raconte pas d'histoire … toute l'intensité passe dans l'entrelacement et l'utilisation "contextuelle" de ces sources disparates : les voix, les passages musicaux, les field-recordings, les vibrations électroniques tactiles des plus chaudes aux plus fantômatiques… tout est soumis à ses traitements et à sa composition (son vocabulaire), radicale et passionnée mais également nuancée. Publicophono est une pièce étrange, entre documentaire et fiction pure, qui agit concrètement sur l'auditeur et son environnement. On imagine sans peine (sans pouvoir décrire) la "sensation" de tous ceux qui se trouvaient sur la plage le jour de sa diffusion… baignés dans ces sons familiers, sans pouvoir les reconnaître. — Theobald Maru, Revue & Corrigée

Dopo la creazione di una web-label che, dall'inizio del 2002, ha messo in rete brani inediti di artisti provenienti dai quattro angoli del pianeta spaziando da splendide promesse come Minamo a recuperi, altrettanto splendidi, come Hugh Hopper, i super-attivi tu m' iniziano il 2003 spingendosi oltre e danno vita a questa nuova etichetta dedicata esclusivamente alla pubblicazione di materiale registrato durante eventi concertistici. Quindi, per il settore discografico, qualcosa di paragonabile a quello che sono stati i John Peel shows per la radio e gli MTV's unplugged per la televisione. Le danze vengono aperte da Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner). Il CD raccoglie l'intero concerto tenutosi a Rimini il 18 Settembre 2000 nel contesto di Prix Italia. La singolarità di tale concerto sta nel fatto che fu eseguito in spiaggia e venne diffuso attraverso il Pubbliphono, un media litoraneo nato proprio a Rimini nel 1946 e tuttora udibile per un largo raggio di chilometri (da Milano Marittima a Pescara). Entrando nel merito del concerto mi sento di poter affermare che è una delle cose migliori uscite dal cilindro del musicista inglese, addirittura paragonabile allo storico "Mort Aux Vaches" della Staalplaat. Si tratta di un cut up che utilizza voci e suoni, carpiti soprattutto alla giungla medianica e utilizzati con certosina precisione, destinati alla creazione di un puzzle paesaggistico contraddistinto da un gusto e da un'espressività che hanno pochi eguali nel contesto di tutto il panorama elettronico. Ci sono almeno tre motivi che rendono consigliabile l'acquisto di questo CD. L'abilità di Scanner nel fare propri tecniche e linguaggi diversi fino a piegarli alle proprie esigenze è, naturalmente, il primo motivo d'interesse. In secondo luogo flasha un'altra abilità: quella necessaria ad affiancare momenti psycho ad altri più distesi e dilatati, oppure complesse elaborazioni ritmiche a soluzioni più propriamente ambient, dando comunque al tutto una caratteristica unitaria. In terzo luogo c'è la bellezza di questo concerto reso accessibile, finalmente, seppur a un numero limitato di persone (solo 200 copie ma potete pur sempre masterizzare). Mr. Mutt, grazie e happy trails.(8) — Etero Genio, Blow Up

Altro artista di grande mestiere è Scanner, che nonostante la prolificità riesce a mantenersi a pregevoli livelli qualitativi. Così accade in Publicphono per Mr.Mutt (nuova lebel in CDR dei Tu m' di Pescara, vedi www.tu-m.com), registrazione di un concerto riminese del 2000, trasmesso in origine lungo 20 km. di spiaggia dagli altoparlanti degli stabilimenti balneari. Nell'opera, dedicata al mezzo radio, il Sig.Rimbaud monta e deforma digitalmente suoni ambientali e voci da programmi italiani, creando drammatiche mini-sequenze e struggenti mantra nostalgici. — Vittore Baroni, Rumore Magazine

Biography

Scanner is the British sound artist Robin Rimbaud – creates absorbing, multi-layered soundscapes that twist technology in unconventional ways. His controversial early work used scanned mobile phone conversations which he wove into his compositions, and more recently his focus has shifted to trawling the hidden noise of the modern metropolis as the symbol of the place where hidden meanings and missed contacts emerge. Winning admiration from Bjork and Stockhausen, Scanner is committed to working with cutting edge practitioners and has collaborated with musicians Bryan Ferry and Laurie Anderson, Rambert Dance and Random Dance Company, writers David Toop and Simon Armitage, the artist Mike Kelley, among many others. As well as producing compositions and audio CDs, his diverse body of work includes soundtracks for films, performances, radio, and site-specific intermedia installations. He has performed and created works in many of the world¹s most prestigious spaces including SFMOMA USA, Hayward Gallery London, Pompidou Centre Paris, Tate Modern London and the Modern Museum Stockholm. www.scannerdot.com