- Fani Konstantinidou
- Undertones
- Series: Moving Furniture Records
- Format: Cd
- Fani Konstantinidou
- Undertones
- Series: Moving Furniture Records
- Format: Cd
UNDERTONES
for percussion idiophones, electronics, and variable field recordings
UNDERTONES is a composition for percussion idiophones, electronics, and variable field recordings, originally composed for four channels. It develops in four movements and is expressed through a graphic score which provides multiple instructions to the musicians and, simultaneously, requires their input and interpretation of the given instructions, including a particular part of the instrumentation.
The field recordings, identified as variable, change with each performance of the piece. Through the score, one of the two performers is instructed to record short sound fragments from (or near) the performance space itself. These recordings are then integrated in the performance, contributing to the development of the structure of each movement: the two musicians respond not only to each other but also to the these captured sounds. Among others, this approach experiments with the musical input of the concert space beyond its acoustic qualities, which are explored through the spatialization in four channels. Depending on the musical identity of the two performers and the chosen recordings, multiple musical elements of the piece—such as parts of the structure, timbre, pitch, and more—diversify and fluctuate. As a result, the piece can be expressed as a semi-improvised performance session or as a composition that can be reproduced, as long as it is performed in the same location.
For the needs of the album, UNDERTONES has been reconceived for the stereo format. In this version, in the absence of specific concert space, the locally specific field recordings are fragments of recordings made in several distinct locations in Amsterdam. These include the organ in the main hall of the Concertgebouw (without audience), the Utopa Baroque Organ in Orgelpark captured from inside the instrument (also without the presence of an audience), and a recording outdoors, beneath the exterior roof of the Stedelijk Museum.
Reviews
Vital Weekly, Frans de Waard
The previous occasion Vital Weekly reviewed work by Fani Konstantinidou was in Vital Weekly 1214, and not by me. Her catalogue isn’t too big, and maybe oddly, this is the first time I’ve heard her work. I am told “she composes music utilising urban and rural sonic environments, combined with conventional and self-designed digital musical instruments. Her musical ideas are expressed in various formats, such as site-specific and multichannel compositions, improvisation, and through collaborative projects with artists of multiple disciplines. Within this context, she performs live electronics and composes music for solo instruments and small ensembles.” On ‘Undertones’, she has four parts of the title piece, for percussion idiophones, electronics, and variable field recordings, and initially this was a four-channel piece. It’s not a work she performs on her own, but with various musicians, helped by a graphic score. Directions arrive through the score but also through the changing use of field recordings. I played this CD a couple of times, trying to get my head around it, which wasn’t easy, as at times I found it too much contemporary music, and at other times, not at all. In the end, by which time I started to think about a review, I was thinking along the lines of an electro-acoustic work with percussion, as in the classic ‘instrument plus tape’ approach. The various percussion bits sounded at times like a very sparse Z’EV, meditative almost, but with those fine electronic sounds and field recordings that are hard to figure out what they, the music has an excellent ritualistic aspect, a meeting of instruments outside in the field, and the field recordings being picked up from this space. It sounds very dense at times, very open on other occasions, and throughout there’s great mysterious vibe in the music.
Igloo Magazine, Pietro Da Sacco
Undertones doesn’t merely explore disorder; it thrives in it—spinning volatile frequencies into an oddly meditative turbulence, where musique concrète meets instinctive structure, and where noise becomes a living, breathing force.
Beneath a shifting veil of pulse and timbre—drawn from field recordings and uncanny sonic fragments—Fani Konstantinidou conjures a rare form of auditory magnetism in Undertones, a suite of four rigorously sculpted pieces. While its title hints at oblique mysteries, the execution delivers something extraordinary: a plunge into volatile bursts of electronic signal and tactile, raw elements.
As described in its press release, the work is “a composition for percussion idiophones, electronics, and variable field recordings, originally composed for four channels.” Each movement unfolds through a graphic score—an open framework that both guides and challenges performers, inviting interpretive dialogue and participatory shaping of sound.
There’s a striking coherence to the semi-improvised flow, where clarity emerges not from structure alone, but from a refined instinct for sonic interplay. Layer upon layer, a kind of refined chaos is revealed—equal parts machine and memory. From the metallic stirrings and industrial echoes that open “Undertones I,” to the splintered interference of “Undertones II,” through the corrosive hum and tactile collision in “Undertones III,” and into the electric twitch and rhythmic buzz of “Undertones IV,” the record traverses a visceral terrain.
Undertones doesn’t merely explore disorder; it thrives in it—spinning volatile frequencies into an oddly meditative turbulence, where musique concrète meets instinctive structure, and where noise becomes a living, breathing force.
