Thom Blum’s Album of Audio Postcards

from the Bandcamp Web page for the album being discussed

About two months ago Thom Blum released the latest album in his Collections series presented on the sfSound label. The full title of the album is Passages: audio postcards, journals, and travelogues, and each track draws upon “concrete” sounds from a different geographical venue. Those locations are Rajasthan in India, Spain, Japan (the cities of Tokyo, Hamamatsu, and Kyoto), Lake Patzucuaro in Mexico, and Morocco. The album was released on Bandcamp with program notes provided not only on its Web page but also through “info” hyperlinks for each of the individual tracks.

Blum’s genre is tape music. The composition of each track begins by collecting recordings of “concrete” sounds from a geographic venue. Blum’s notes cite Luc Ferrari’s concept of “denotational” music, explaining that “the bulk of the sounds are from, of, and about some places begin portrayed, as well as being about the composer portraying them.” The Web pages for the individual tracks then provide further information about what sounds have been captured and how they have been portrayed.

Ferrari was a founding member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRMC), working with audio facilities provided by Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (RTF). His colleagues included Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. These were pioneers in the practice of capturing “natural” sounds on tape and then manipulating the source content to create new compositions. Schaeffer was the leading practitioner in this effort, which became known as musique concrète.

Those familiar with Schaeffer’s work are therefore likely to recognize connections between Blum’s techniques and those that Schaeffer explored in some of his earliest works, including the Études de bruits (noise études) and “Variations sur une flûte mexicaine” (variations on a Mexican flute), created, respectively, in 1948 and 1949. However, given the limitations of available technology, Schaeffer’s compositions were brief: None of the individual tracks in those two early works is as long as five minutes. Working with more flexible digital technology, Blum has been able to extend his own studies over significantly longer durations; and the account of Morocco is almost twenty minutes long. Nevertheless, Ferrari’s prioritization of denotation prevails, for the most part, over any effort to provide a narrative frame for the duration.

The CD recordings of Schaeffer’s complete works (including those created in partnership with Henry) have provided me with enjoyable listening experiences for several decades. Those encounters have allowed me to reflect on some of my own early efforts in tape music and to appreciate those offerings at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival concerts that I can squeeze into my schedule. In that context I find Blum’s work to be an inventive “response” to the “call” first issued in the late Forties; and I can appreciate how much of that invention has benefitted from the many advantages of digital technology.