Aurality -20°10’45.3176” -044°04’01.4329” is an array of sonic encounters that floats and wavers above the pliable junction of experimental electronics and field recording research.
The first release by French artist Niko de Paula Lefort (also known as nikoLFO) for Famous Grapes Recordings reflects on the relationship between bioacoustics and harmonic space; it explores the effects of Time Lag Accumulation, a tape looping technique developed by Terry Riley and Pauline Oliveros through their pioneering work in the 1960s.
Aurality -20°10’45.3176” -044°04’01.4329” was recorded at the Fazendinha, or Little Farm, near Belo Horizonte, in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Augmenting past inquiries into the materiality of sound and its role in mediating experience and transmitting knowledge, de Paula Lefort surveys the consonant properties of the region’s biophony. According to field recordist Bernie Krause, biophony is the aural character of all living organisms in a particular geographic area. Aurality -20°10’45.3176” -044°04’01.4329” is a two-sided exploit of a 24-hour period radiating out of dawn and dusk. Divided further, each cyclical procession yields a new orchestra of natural sonic phenomena.
Based in Berlin, de Paula Lefort works as a musician, musical instrument developer, field recordist, installation artist and audio technologist. Also known as NikoLFO, he is a resident host on Archipel Stations Community Radio, a co-founder of the record label Portals Editions and half of the Shaddah Tuum project.
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De Paula Lefort’s work has appeared in commissions for CTM Festival, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Berghain and the Haus der elecktronischen Künste Basel. His music and recordings have been released on imprints like aufnahme+wiedergabe, Emitter Micro and Portals Editions. He holds degrees in Visual Arts (Paris I), Generative Art / Computational Art (UDK), Music Technology (CalArts), and Experimental Sound Practices (CalArts). De Paula Lefort currently studies Dhrupad singing with Amelia Cuni.
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The music of Aurality -20°10’45.3176” -044°04’01.4329” is joined on the cover by the photography of Elsa Laurent. It is the second of four LP covers by Laurent to be presented by Famous Grapes. The collaboration between FGR and the Paris-based artist began in 2019, during the imprint’s debut Famous Grapes Sessions in Berlin, when Laurent performed an audiovisual live set with sir o sir.
Not unlike the music released by the artists of Famous Grapes, Laurent’s work reveals its subtleties upon further analysis. It’s a study of light, tone and colour that serves to further the ambivalence of the lens rather than assert its objectivity. Fittingly, Laurent’s photos remain open to interpretation, obfuscating the relationship between the subject and its materiality.
FGR02 features Qualia by Elsa Laurent.
credits
released July 1, 2021
Composition, Recording and Mixing by NikoLFO
Mastered by Rashad Becker
Album design by Melissa Amarelo
Cover photograph by Elsa Laurent
Curated by Timothy Isherwood and Daniel Melfi
Famous Grapes Recordings
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