Description:
An Occupied Space is the debut full-length release by Los Angeles artist Robert Crouch. Each track takes as its point of departure a field recording of a public place where music is integral to the experience of these social constructs. Throughout the release, music is piped through loudspeakers across public plazas and boulevards, footsteps cross thresholds where reverberating guitars and vocals spill out into city. “I found it necessary to give myself a very strict set of parameters,” Crouch states, “in order to approach the idea of making music in the first place. I suppose it comes from my training as a visual artist.”
Furthering this analogy to a visual arts practice, An Occupied Space has perhaps more in common with the photographers from the Düsseldorf School, rather than the history of field recording or ambient music. Much like the photographers Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Ruff, and how they wrestle with both the psychology of their subject matter as well as the politics and constraints of their chosen medium, An Occupied Space can be considered to be a collection of landscape studies, with the artist fulfilling the roles of documentarian, composer, and observer simultaneously.
Structurally, An Occupied Space operates within overlapping contexts; they exist as documents, as meditations on the psychology of place, and finally as self-reflexive “objects” that address the contingent nature of their own construction. They are as much about music as they are music. “I wanted to employ melody without necessarily being melodic, to explore texture without remaining static, and to respect the integrity of the original recordings while still allowing my hand as artist to remain evident.”
Reviews:
Best of 2011 Lists:
Richard Chartier, Headphone Commute, France Jobin, Marc Manning, Spiritual Archives
Après quelques EP, collaborations (avec Yann Novak, boss de Dragon’s Eye Recordings) et participations à des compilations, An Occupied Space est le premier véritable album de Robert Crouch. L’artiste, basé à Los Angeles, est avant tout actif au niveau des arts visuels (sculptures, installations), intégrant parfois la musique à son travail.
Pour ce premier album, le point de départ était des field recordings, enregistrements captés dans des lieux publics retenus pour leur musicalité. Il peut s’agir de galeries marchandes baignées de musique d’ambiance, ou plus classiquement de places et carrefours marqués par le bruit des passants.
S’il s’agit de la base même de ces cinq pistes, on se rend vite compte que ces enregistrements d’ambiances sonores passent en fait au second plan. En effet les petits tintements qui ouvrent l’album sur I Melt With You I sont vite rejoints par une nappe froide et oscillante, douce et infinie qui nous rapproche alors d’une ambient minimale, des travaux de William Basinski ou Richard Chartier qui sont d’ailleurs remerciés dans les crédits. Au second plan, on discerne de petits bruitages, certainement le fruit d’enregistrements qui apportent une deuxième lecture, plaçant le disque entre abstraction minimale et bribes de vie bien réelle, entre immobilisme et mouvement.
An Occupied Space n’opère pas de réel changement d’un morceau à l’autre. El Capitan nous apparaitra juste un peu plus classique avec des nappes ambient moins statiques, plus mélodiques, et des field recordings plus discrets, Firehouse II joue sur des rupture entre drones soufflants et accords de violoncelle (ou assimilé), mais Firehouse I nous permet de retrouver des nappes feutrées, envahies de souffles, plus proche du drone. En fonction des tonalités utilisées, l’artiste oscille entre ombre et lumière, entre ambiances cotonneuses et minérales.
On sera plus surpris par la construction de I Melt With You II qui conclue l’album avec une alternance de nappes texturées et de silences, laissant alors apparaître quelques bruitages granuleux et grésillements que l’on avait presque oublié.
Bien au delà du field recording, An Occupied Space donne plutôt l’impression d’être “An Empty Space” tant ces nappes et drones tendent à tout effacer et invitent à l’oubli. Un magnifique album pour amateurs d’ambient minimale et contemplative.
– EtherREAL
An Occupied Space is the debut full-length by LA’s Robert Crouch, taking as departure point field recordings of a public place to which music is integral. The space occupied here is emblematic of anywhere anonymous herds circulate in anodyne dreamworlds. Crouch’s fields were recorded with an added criterion: to capture not just the sound, but also the music of these spaces; the places his recorder was perched had music diffused by loudspeakers to let the essential sonic constituents colour the soundfield. The work seeks to be as much about music, its function in urban contexts, the way it lulls our anaesthetized consumer wanderings, as it is itself music. Each piece takes on the aspect of a sonic tableau vivant, albeit one to which the artist also contributes as shapeshifter. In fact, they’re far more musical than other releases here in that musical elements predominate, site-specific sounds rendered more as background texture. It’s made up of drone mists and manipulations which blur the listener’s trajectory, moving through an opaque pointillist fog pierced by odd noises off in the remote crowds and fragments of decayed consumer symphony dinned out by dull PAs. Little topographic residue is foregrounded on most of the tracks, save for some whirling detritus, even then barely identifiable, late in the day; most pieces articulate themselves as richly textured ambient drone tracts, as on “Firehouse II” (clip below) – a gorgeous piece of heavens-gaze reverie. Crouch channels a certain distillate of the alienated air of these familiar yet faceless spaces, but not with the cold clinical treatment one might expect, rather conferring a peculiar warmth and intimacy. Ultimately, there’s a sense of An Occupied Space being slightly spuriously conceptually situated – as a field-fueled assemblage masquerading as a pseudo-sociological document; it may be that the process aspects are somehow lost in translation, but the impression is of a collection of musically absorbing product – sculpted pieces in which field recordings are blended with electronic treatments into evocative interior landscapes.
– Igloo Magazine
An Occupied Space is the first full-length release for Los Angeles based multi-media artist Robert Crouch. What initially sounds like typical ambient fare becomes livelier when its concept is revealed. To quote directly from the artist’s website: ‘Each track takes as its point of departure a field recording of a public place where music is integral to the experience of these social constructs. Throughout the release, music is piped through loudspeakers across public plazas and boulevards, footsteps cross thresholds where reverberating guitars and vocals spill out into the city.’ The five tracks on this release are built from warm tones and muffled field recordings, yet the appeal rests in its hushed melodies and deep percussive elements, all barely detectable beneath a layer of foggy ambience. It is as if one is hearing it from a distance, or from an ‘occupied space’ that one is not part of; a fascinating sonic play on interior versus exterior, evoking images that are barely noticeable through its dense fog.
– The Silent Ballet
This is a Los Angeles based artist and curator who works in different art fields such as photography, sound, installation, video, and sculpture. He has made exhibitions in the USA, England and has released records on Untitled & After and Loöq. “An Occupied Space”, the debut album of Robert Crouch, is a subtle sound description of public places based in field recordings. In the music overlapped different layers of sounds processed creating minimal landscapes, micro pulsations and drones. The cinematic character of each track unveils a subtle but not evident melody which is beneath the surface. “Firehouse II” invites to a deep listening to walk through an obscure landscape.
– Loop.cl
An Occupied Space is the debut full-length release by Robert Crouch, a Los Angeles-based visual artist and electronic musician whose music has appeared on Untitled & After and Loøq recordings. Each of its five tracks is conceived to be a landscape study of sorts, with a field recording of a particular site capturing the myriad sounds that inhabit that space for the duration of the track in question. As a result, each piece assumes the form of a living sonic portrait of the setting, albeit one which Crouch also contributes to as the guiding hand that shapes the materials into final form. They’re hardly unmusical pieces, however, as musical elements relating to the site in question are woven into their fabric. If anything, they’re primarily musical pieces as said elements dominate, with site-specific sounds assuming more of a background presence within the pieces. Though “Firehouse I,” for example, might have been recorded at the titular locale, little overt evidence of the site comes into play until bits of whirr and clatter emerge in the piece’s second half, and even then such sounds aren’t easily identifiable; instead the piece largely plays out as a swirling ambient-drone of near-twelve-minute duration. In addition, two tones oscillate loudly throughout the rather celestial “Firehouse II,” imbuing the piece with a soothing quality in spite of the volume level, and in “El Capitan,” the shuffle of footsteps is heard, but the focal point is nevertheless billowing ambient-drone thrum. Ironically, the one piece that’s least conventionally musical is the one whose “I Melt With You” title can’t help but invoke Modern English; the setting itself assumes an undeniably abstract character in its melding of blurry rumble, pulsating tones, and what sounds like the faint, metronomic swish of a clock’s hands. In the final analysis, it’s of minor import whether the recording’s field recordings-oriented pieces ultimately register as sound portraits or as ambient music settings, as An Occupied Space holds up more than well enough on purely listening terms.
– Textura
Many records born from the juxtaposition of outdoor environments and strictly musical materials impress with some kind of aural majesty on a first listen, then reveal a desperate shortage of ideas which in turn introduces an inevitable sense of saturation after half of their length. An Occupied Space – debut album of Los Angeles-based sound and visual artist Crouch – is not what you call a haunting release, but the legitimacy of its existence is out of question. The music, we’re told, was diffused by loudspeakers placed “across public plazas and boulevards” in order to let the essential sonic constituents – which include strata of unrecognizably processed guitars and vocals – influence the acoustic panorama of that location. On record, it is impossible to determine the effect of the procedure on the local populations; what’s certain is that this stuff moves in washes of static agglomerates, a constant ebb and flow of permanent gradations that surely does not affect our consciousness negatively and, on the contrary, generate states of mind that could even prelude to an ecstasy of sorts. Still, a general lack of poignancy and/or mystery in conjunction with the effortlessness characterizing the harmonic constitution place the work on a secondary level of significance, definitely behind the actual milestones of this area.
– Touching Extremes
Le territoire urbain, la façon dont il est aujourd’hui pénétré de toute part par la technologie au point de devenir lui-même « technologique », plus globalement en fait tout ce que recouvre la notion d’environnement urbain, nourrit depuis des lustres la réflexion et l’imaginaire des créateurs de musiques électroniques. Les défricheurs de l’ambient music et du field recordings plus particulièrement, ont fait de la ville le terrain privilégié de leurs expérimentations.
L’Américain Robert Crouch, dont le background d’artiste visuel ferait presque office de leitmotiv, se lance à son tour dans l’aventure électronique, à l’assaut de la ville post-moderne avec son premier album : An Occupied Space.
L’espace occupé ici, c’est celui des lieux publics : aérogares et grands magasins climatisés, où des foules anonymes prolifèrent en accéléré selon un ballet absurde et géométrique. Robert Crouch y a enregistré de nombreux field recordings en partant d’un critère simple : capturer plus que le son, la musique de ces espaces. Car tous les lieux où Robert Crouch a posé son matériel de sound capture étaient parcourus par une bande-son, une musique d’ambiance, cette fameuse muzak qui inspira à Brian Eno son manifeste Music for Airports.
Par conséquent, et la fiche presse du label Dragon’s Eye Recordings le dit très bien : l’œuvre An occupied Space a autant à voir avec la musique (sa fonction dans la ville, la façon dont elle berce nos errances aseptisées dans un paradis de la consommation) qu’elle est musique par elle-même, qu’elle est même musique composée.
A tous les coups elle est faite de drones atones et de manipulations qui rendent la réalité incertaine, indistincte. En effet, pendant les quarante minutes du disque, on évolue dans une brume électrique des plus opaques à travers laquelle percent parfois des rumeurs de cohues déjà lointaines et des bribes de symphonies de consommation tombant en ruine, à peine dégluties par des armées de hauts-parleurs.
En fonction des émotions qu’elle nous procure, l’œuvre de Robert Crouch fait ressortir l’atmosphère anxiogène, le climat de dépression et de solitude qui habite ces espaces à la fois familiers et froidement anonymes. Mais l’américain ne s’embarrasse jamais d’un traitement objectiviste, loin de là, privilégiant une démarche largement abstraite et subjective, conférant à son propos une aura intimiste des plus pertinentes.
An occupied Space n’est donc pas une compile de field recordings en guise de document pseudo-sociologique. C’est avant tout un recueil de pièces sculpturales où se croisent longues dérives ambient et traitements électroniques pointus. Formule habile par laquelle Robert Crouch transforme ces espaces aliénés en paysages, en phénomènes intérieurs.
– dMute
On le sait, la baie de San Francisco est porteuse d’imaginaire. Le dernier en date à le prouver est Robert Crouch, qui expose sous l’œil du dragon ses tableaux de peinture sonore.
Crouch est un paysagiste qui aime les quatre saisons. Ses marines flattent son goût pour les mers d’huile et ce même si sous la surface la menace gronde, comme le montre le beat étouffé d’I Melt with You I. La mer à perte de vue, onctueuse, ondulante, d’El Capitan vous capture et vous rejette un peu plus loin, sur le fascinant Firehouse. Votre regard se pose à droite puis à gauche, l’oreille est à l’affût des nuances d’une polyphonie d’ondines invisibles. Vous reprenez ensuite la mer, mais vous savez qu’un jour ou l’autre vous ne pourrez pas faire autrement que de revenir à l’endroit que vous êtes en train de déserter.
– le son du Grisli
