Mark Bain
"Vibronics" mnCD

  Mark Bain is an intriguing artist living in Amsterdam with a personal mission : chasing the soul of buildings being alive. He uses a complex battery of homemade complicated machines to generate resonance in the architectural system and afterwards record their "vibro-acoustic" energy. A panel of these mechanical oscillators and other digital controllers can be seen on the cover of his miniCD, which is composed of three tracks.
The first piece is the study of a wooden bridge that forded a small stream and is composed of a vibrating low frequency partly perturbated by water and nature field recordings. On the second track, a huge metallic train container was elevated and starts resonating through infrasound (the sound being recorded inside the metal box where people could enter). It results in a fascinating ambient framework made by a delicate interlace of deep drones and rich metallic sounds patterns. The third track is a soundtrack for chemical testing laboratory of Antwerp in which sounds and vibrations were introduced in lab objects. Small tickling sounds are mixed with monotonal drone layers and a wind-like background sound.
The richness, the fineness and quality of these ample sonic pieces full of vibrating/pulsating buildings/objects really impressed me and I am definetely loooking forward hearing any other soundworks Bain could have recorded!
 
Staalplaat CD (2000)- time: 19.38