Robert Curgenven

The author of the mix is Robert Curgenven (b. 1974), an Australian classically trained organist, composer and sound artist. He started his musical career 30 years ago and went through many different mediums: worked in the radio and as a graphic designer for music magazines, including writing and editing. During his time in Australia, particularly the Northern territory, Curgenven started making field recordings in an attempt to capture the diverse environment around him. Since 2003, he has regularly exhibited his sound installations and performed live in Europe, Japan, Australia and USA. Curgenven is specializing in works based on audio feedback generated from guitars, turntables and custom dubplates. He is also exploring and sculpting various noises, resonances and detailed field recordings. In the last decade Curgenven has released over 10 specific records on such conceptual labels as Richard Chartier’s LINE, The Tapeworm, his own Recorded Fields imprint and others. His highly psychoacoustic music shapes listener’s perception of space and the flow of time. It is important to mention that Curgenven’s new album is coming out early in 2014 on his revitalised Recorded Fields Editions imprint.

STM 099 is a colossal and complex audio selection that was originally named as “Silent Night”, a polemic against Christmas. This austere mix includes a densely layered selection of expressive works released between 1971 and 2013. Curgenven skilfully demonstrates how to melt barriers between talents of different generations. Mesmerizing pieces of modern composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki, György Ligeti, Frank Bretschneider and dynamic works by notable musicians such as Emptyset, Peter Rehberg, John Zorn’s Naked City, Jazkamer (Lasse Marhaug) completely connect with each other to form a systematic and fluid wholeness. The basis of the selection stands on the sweeping melodies enriched with frightening mood of obscurity, constantly expanding enormous cinematic soundscapes, hardcore percussions and permanent refined intersection between acoustic and electronic sound. Gradually emerging vivid and ghostly vocals by Diamanda Galas penetrate the subconsciousness and fill the space with strange pressure and haunted aura. Observant micro layering of cut sound particles, presented vast arrangement’s architecture and carefully reshaped textures create completely new structures with different decorations, constructive interiors, unexpected dramatic surroundings and thrilling activity. Exemplary development and smoothly maintained progressive tension, emotional narrative and curiosity keep the intrigue till the very end.

Records and connections

STM 099 is like an emphatic and puzzling James Nares’ abstract painting “Blacktop” where extremely viscous white strokes across the black ground create poetic, yet nihilistic, subtly metaphorical masterpiece that leads to numerous of controversial interpretations. Nares’ focus on the investigations exploring form, direction, rhythm and repetition of objects in motion are quite similar to Curgenven’s multilayer selection and its indirect composite manifest against global absurdity and humankind foolishness. According to the author of this mix, “its a sort of ‘(anti)Christmas mix’, ideal for a room heated to 337° just like in the Southern Hemisphere to experience the tension and hallucinatory, humid joy of an artificial family gathering amidst soaring temperatures, volatile temperaments – not to mention the horror and ennui of pulpit politics, suburbia, daytime television and summer lethargy. Structurally and cinematically the mix responds to the Christmas and holiday overtones in ‘Wake In Fright’ and ‘The Shining’ with their opposing Yuletide settings”. Curgenven’s audio collage clearly mirrors his musical sophistication, constructive thinking, scrupulousness and reveals his measured thoughts about global society. In all, it is a high quality timeless work that requires patience, attention and open mind to fully absorb its encoded meaning and all the intensive, sometimes even provocative background convulsions.