my Selected Sound Works cassette & bandcamp release from http://www.Pentiments.org was reviewed by Rafael González for Electronic Cottage here: https://www.electroniccottage.org/reviews/joseph-nechvatal-selected-sound-works-review
the Selected Sound Works project is here: https://pentiments.bandcamp.com/album/selected-sound-works-1981-2021
Joseph Nechvatal Selected Sound Works (1981-2021) Pentiments
Reviewed by Dave Mandl in The Wire November 2021 (Issue 453), pp. 70-72
Selected Sound Works brings together 40 years of the sound art recordings of noise composer and conceptual artist Joseph Nechvatal. Arguably a pioneer in the field, Nechvatal was cofounder, in 1983, of the seminal experimental cassette series Tellus; collaborated with such Downtown avant garde mainstays as Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham and Barbara Ess in the early 1980s; and produced work at Harvestworks’ Public Access Synthesizer Studio (PASS) in its formative years, around the same time.
Nechvatal’s early sound collages and musique concrète pieces evoke a grittier and more hyperactive Pierre Schaeffer, with the occasional more recognisably musical stretch along the lines of the hybrid music/tape work of early 70s Franco Battiato. Field recordings and snippets of decontexualised dialogue from films and television, often contorted beyond recognition, crop up in random spots and at blinding speed, alongside samples of Nechvatal’s own guitar and synthesizer playing, and other sources we can only guess at. While Nechvatal seems to use the term plunderphonics rather loosely, “How To Kill”, a frenetic assault on Janet Jackson’s “Nasty”, is unmistakably John Oswald-esque, as is “Excerpt I From Reckless”, a wildly stuttering James Brown cut-up. “Excerpt II From Reckless”, presumably an anti-war piece, includes an extended audio blitzkrieg via gunfire and whizzing missiles, striking me as a kind of contemporary sonic counterpart to Picasso’s Guernica.
Most of Nechvatal’s more recent work, like the visual art he has been producing in the last couple of decades, employs custom written computer software and viral techniques – for example, using algorithms to control the replication and decay of various sonic elements in his compositions. Not to denigrate the early work, but the 2000s pieces, which are more obviously electronic and world fit comfortably in the category of computer music, seem more mature in their clearly advanced use of technology as well as their more laconic pace and less jagged, digital sound. But Nechvatal’s thumbprint can be detected just as clearly in these, and the two broad periods of his work complement each other nicely.
I am please to announce that I will be presenting Immersion Into Noise ~ my visual art & art theory & noise music ~ at Vasulka Kitchen Brno gallery in Brno, Czech Republic on Tuesday, 26 October, 2021 at 17:00 https://www.vasulkakitchen.org/en/joseph-nechvatal-immersion-into-noise-presentation
My art review of the Bernar Venet: 1961 & 1963: les origins show at Galerie Ceysson & Bėnétière Paris has been published in The Brooklyn Rail here: https://brooklynrail.org/2021/10/artseen/Bernar-Venet-1961-1963-les-origins
I have put my paper Immersive Excess in the Apse of Lascaux ~ delivered October 30th 2021 at Museo e Istituto Fiorentino di Preistoria in Florance at the Art Before Art conference ~ here: https://www.academia.edu/55036212/Immersive_Excess_in_the_Apse_of_Lascaux
The first review of my Pentiments cassette Selected Sound Works (1981-2021) has come out of Rome by Massimo Ricci: https://touchingextremes.wordpress.com/2021/09/18/joseph-nechvatal-selected-sound-works-1981-2021/
~ my Pentiments OrlandO et la tempête art booklet ~ that will also accompany my double vinyl LP The Viral Tempest (dropping this fall at Pentiment Records) has entered the earthly realm ~
On 5/5/2013 Johan Westenburg interviewed Joseph Nechvatal in his Montparnasse flat about his diverse career as a visual artist, writer, and noise music composer. This is an excerpt.
