Sound
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Nour Mobarak - 3 Performance Works
Digital Release, September 16, 2020
on Cafe Oto's TakuRoku label
From Cafe Oto:
Nour Mobarak is a compelling new artist from Los Angeles whose work, as she describes "excavates violence and desire – the compulsions, and glitches in both a person or nation state." We fell in love with what she does thanks to her 2019 album 'Father Fugue', released on Sean McCann's Recital label. In it, the left channel of the audio documents conversations with her father Jean Mobarak - a polyglot who has a 30-second memory and lives in the mountains of Lebanon - while the right channel is composed simply of improvised song. The result conjures a similar effect that of Godard's 'Numéro deux' - whereby documented, composed and improvised elements are projected through two channels, then coagulate to form a multi-faceted, beguiling whole.
To understand Nour as a film-maker - someone who acts behind and in-front of the lens - is perhaps easier than that of a musician. When we asked Nour to do a release for Takuroku she kindly responded by offering us compositions used in her multi-disciplinary, multi-channel live performances over the past 2 years, mixed down to stereo as self-contained works. What we hear is just one part of her overall projection, but that of which delves deep; investigating the voices of others, her own voice and vocal material that forms human languages. It's poetry, a Cassavetes set piece, a walk in the park, a voice in abandon, a philosophical meditation on voice, agency and human beings - but of course much more than ideas projected on a flat canvas. Each piece moves and shakes, creating rhythms emanating from the syntax and intonation of language and the voice. Toothtone sounds like rippling streams of water running concurrently, splashing into themselves and overlapping one another. Allophone Movement and its arrangement of voices captures the immediacy of machine-funk sampling techniques, whipping the immediacy of vocal expression into a composition that swings back and forth, like a Ron Hardy edit stripped to its bones. On Phoneme Movement her own vocals take centre stage with spirals, gurgles, purrs and cries that reach ecstatic heights: the voice excavated from its bodily origins. Hopefully we'll be able to present Nour's work in Cafe OTO some time in the not too distant future.
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Bana Haffar / Nour Mobarak
You Are the Audience
Cassette Tape
Released April 3, 2020 on The Tapeworm
This cassette tape is a document of two live performances by the Haffar/Mobarak duo. Their mutual pleasure in variable tunings, granular synthesis, and structured improvisations shaped their collaboration.
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Nour Mobarak - Father Fugue LP
Released July 19 2019 on Recital
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NOOR - Synapse Fusion Refusal
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Fugue Series
Fugue I, 2019
Trametes versicolor, wood pellets, speaker
2 mushrooms:
8 x 14 x 13 inches (20.3 x 35 1/2 x 33 cm)
8 x 13 x 13 inches (20 1/4 x 33 x 33 cm)
Exhibited at Miguel Abreu Gallery
Fugue II, 2019
Trametes versicolor, wood pellets, 2 speakers
2 mushrooms:
9 x 13 x 13 inches (23 x 33 x 33 cm)
10 x 13 x 13 inches (25 1/2 x 33 x 33 cm)
Exhibited at Miguel Abreu Gallery
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Un Aveu
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Some Other Music Projects
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Fred Meyer
Fred Meyer was a free music project with Lala Rivera. We played together for 7 years, near the end with Sam Garner and some recordings with Chris Gunn. We also recorded a full album which we have yet to mix. Otherwise, we made this cassette tape early on on Portland Bad Date Line.
This soundcloud has a recording of one of our later tunes when we started making tunes out of our noise, called Johnson & Johnson. And here's a video from a live performance in 2009.
Smegma
I had the honor of playing in Los Angeles Free Music Society band and collective since 1973, Smegma, for a number of years, mostly under the name of Rogue Iniki, or Rogue iiniki, or my own. Moments from that time have been pressed on some records and cassettes, though these aren't all of them.
With Smegma I played alongside Ju Suk Reet Meate, Oblivia, Ace Farren Ford, Dennis Duck, Vetza, Brad Hostetler, Aaron Dilloway, C. Spencer Yeh, John Wiese, Mitch Brown, Joseph Hammer, Joe Potts, Rick Potts, Madeleine Villano, Vetza, Brenna Murphy, Birch Cooper, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy and many more.
Dude War (UK)
From 18-21 I lived in Brighton, England and I would get tossed and sit in my room. I didn't know very much about (shall I say it? does it even exist?) avant-garde music other than John Cage Four Walls and the softcore Koyaanisqatsi I'd picked up at Sam Goody in high school. In my aging adolescent bedroom I would check out and and record myself breaking things, making cacophony, cutting it up and pasting it together backward, etc, thinking I was really onto something. I essentially thought I invented free jazz and impossible music. Very funny. Anyway, later in that phase I got together with these guys - Alexis, Ben, and James - and we had this band, Dude War, which I think we believed was pret-ty hard.
Typhonian Highlife
Sang on Typhonian Highlife "World of Shells", out very soon on Pacific City Sound Visions.
Sean McCann
Sang on McCann's Music for Public Ensemble with Ben Baker Billington, Andrew Chalk, Kayla Cohen, Ian William Craig, Maxwell August Croy, Sarah Davachi, Hank Doyle, Matthew Erickson, Scott Foust, Rob Frye, Celia Hollander, Seth Kasselman, Graham Lambkin, Gabi Losoncy, Rob Magill, Sean McCann, Erica McLachlin, Dave McPeters, Allen Mozek, Tom James Scott, Zachary Paul Schwartz, Troy Schafer, Cameron Stallones, Nick Storring, Matthew Sullivan, Lillian Paige Walton
Max Eilbacher
Vox on Max Eilbacher - Conjunctive Phase Standards (Synthesis)
Eat Skull
Sang on Eat Skull's How Do I Know When to Say Goodnight
Él-g
Sang on Él-g's - Capitaine Présent 5
Hello Tornado
When I lived in Paris from 2006-2007 I regularly played with Erik Minkkinen.
He ran (and still runs) a headphone music festival called Placard for people who wanted to party all night in Paris without having to deal with noise complaints. These ended up becoming cyber festivals too, with all performances streamed online. A community of mostly electronic and experimental musicians would (I guess they probably still do) perform. Here's a video of he and I doing a placard performance, Erik in Paris and me from my bathtub in Portland.
Luxury Prevention
Sang on Luxury Prevention - Tenable Fort
Butts Heartland
Butts Heartland was Juliette Amoroso, Keira Albright, Lala Rivera, and myself. We improvised together from 2007-2008. Many recordings are stashed somewhere in Juliette's house. Thought I would mention it here because it was a formative time.