wastelands by José del Avellanal published on 2023-12-10T10:39:09Z “And tonight he would drink from the waters of Cibola, yes, and it would taste like wine.” Taking loose inspiration from Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic epic ‘The Stand’ (1990), the work sets the ensemble into a synthetic and erratic environment of sound and light, depicting the struggle of the performers to ‘sing’ through their instruments and find new ways of expression to transgress their desolate surroundings. Bringing together the human and the artificial, the synthetic and the organic, the work presents a combination of live instrumental performance, electronics, light design and AI-generated sonic content (obtained from the neural network PRiSM SampleRNN) as an exploration of newfound ways of expression amidst an imagined posthuman landscape. Work commissioned by Ex-Sentia Ensemble, with generous support from the Fondation Nicati-de Luze. Recording from the world premiere as part of the 'Metabiome' tour in PROGR Aula (Bern, Switzerland) Miguel Fernández - tenor saxophone Santiago Villar - percussion Jacob Mason - piano/keyboard Anton Kiefer - audio technician Genre Contemporary
