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on air
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1.
RLO II 10'35"
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notes
by rafael toral
On Air is an improvised music piece with two parts. Part I consists of sounds produced using modified electronic toys further altered by analog electronic devices. Part II uses electric guitars with feedback circuits modulated using the same analog electronics as in the first part. The present recordings document a series of performances delivered by No Noise Reduction as live radio broadcasts in Portuguese radio stations.
Part I: Several two-dollar sound generating electronic toys, such as laser gun, mobile telephone or karaoke beatbox, were opened and modified. All of them consist of a simple electronic circuit board with metal switching contacts, a micro-chip, a resistor and two batteries. The circuits were rewired in a way that allow sounds to be produced by directly touching the board with the fingertips and altered by touching the terminals of the resistor. Touching the resistor terminals affects the pitch in different ways, depending of which signal is running through our body. The output of the circuits were then routed to several electronic devices, such as analog delay, distortion pedals, phasers, waveform transposers, wah pedals, random filters, aliasing noise modified delay and two old tape echo machines.
Part II: Two electric guitars running through the same electronic devices used in Part I, each feed a small battery-operated portable amplifier-loudspeaker system. All the sounds in Part II are feedbacks ocurring between the loudspeakers and the guitars' pickups, modulated by the electronics. Variations in the battery voltage also affect the feedback, producing mysteriouly intermittent sounds, changed by the volume and tone controls. In such situation, the electronic devices' modulation also produces surprising and unpredictable effects.
Performing On Air: Both the toys' and guitars' setups behave very unpredictably. Sound generation can never be taken for granted, will always somehow escape control. Many of the events were real time discoveries that we would drive along and change in a fluid way. But for the most part we gained control by adapting ourselves to the equipment's behavior, playing with it in a true musical performance. The instruments' unpredictability, summed with the improvisation an the live "on air" condition created a high level of risk, a very "dangerous" musical situation. That turned the performance of On Air into a very lively and exciting process.
reviews
On Air's cover illustration, which depicts a home-made toy car, is a key to understanding the sounds encoded inside. For this is toy music, made in a spirit of play with modified playthings by Rafael Toral and Paulo Feliciano. The Portuguese duo's previous album was a collection of delirious, scrappy miniatures inspired equally by out-rock and free improv examples; this one is composed of three two-part radio concerts. During the first part of each performance they ran signals from a bunch of customized electronic toys through their guitar effects, and during the second part they used their guitars, but I defy you to tell them apart. Regardless of the source, the sounds are extremely wigged out, evoking mental images of an opera sung by oxidized radio components or a parliamentary debate about electrical ethics conducted by Meccano limbed, circuit-lunged legislators.
Bill Meyer, Popwatch #9
The duo's
On Air is assembled from radio concerts during which the men played guitars
and children's toys through myriad electronic effects; the humorously
fractured results sound like a riot in a home for retired sci-fi movie
robots.
Bill Meyer, Chicago Reader, Oct. 1996
NNR are another project whose partial responsibility lies with Portuguese
composer and guitarist Rafael Toral; his partner in their exploits is
composer and electronics-manipulator Paulo Feliciano. Their working practices
are more those of lab-bound mad scientists than musicians. They take a
bunch of sound-generating, bargain basement toys - laser guns, beatboxes
and so on - strip them down to the guts of their circuitry, with which
they fuck, sending the resulting sounds down an appropriately lo-fi FX
chain of filters, delays, harmonisers and fuzz boxes. They then repeat
the process with sounds from [each other's] guitar. If this sounds a tad
academic, check out the samples we've posted. For this is joyous stuff,
and if there's a laboratory ethos to the proceedings, this is accompanied
with a wide-eyed sense of discovery, as they spin out great, spiralling,
retro-futurist, analogue-fetishist sounds, like Syd Barrett's take on
Morton Subotnick. Or something.
Simon Hopkins, sonomu, 03 Dec 1998