released May 1, 2015

Format: Edition of 100 C42 cassettes in clear poly shell case with risograph print
Duration: 39 minutes (tape), 23 minutes (projection)
Label: Hideous Replica (HR9)
Country: United Kingdom
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Modified Boombox III, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Transmitters
Date: 2013 (composed), May 2015 (released)

Composed by Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer.

Thank you to Louie Rice.

“Bypass (2013) called for a heavily amplified live duo performance of Modified Boombox and prepared pump organ against a focal verging image. It is one of Coppice's first compositions to exclude signal processing. Instead, each part changes progressively while developing independently.

We've recorded and isolated each part and placed them on opposing sides of a tape to further evade the intended mode of listening of the piece as a duo performance. Instead, we offer a retrospective listening. We call this listening separation Bypass Ideal.

The composition's degrees of intensity, tension, and intentions are present in each side of the Bypass Ideal tape (Modified Boombox and transmitters on side A, and prepared pump organ on side B), and in the joining of the duo parts in approximation to the original live performance with video projection in the simulated Bypass Projection.

Germane to the original performances, we share with you our proposed "idealisation" of experience of parts and the converging approximation of what Bypass was with visuals. Enjoy at high volume in a dark room.” –Coppice, 2015 (revised 2023)

For more information visit coppice.futurevessel.com and instagram.com/futurevessel.

Side effects:

“In 2013, Chicago duo Coppice (Noe Cuellar and Joseph Kramer) created Bypass, a performance for a modified boom box and prepared pump organ. Bypass Ideal takes this performance and undoes it, splitting its two core elements into a pair of separate sonic investigations. Previous Coppice work is thick and dynamic, with the sounds of various wind-making instruments such as bellows and shruti boxes layered into fast-paced surges of sound, with boom box loops cutting subtle sonic notches into the swathe. 2013’s Holes/Tract on Consumer Waste is a good, recommended example, as indeed is the original Bypass: check out this video for a taste. If Bypass Ideal lacks some of that viscous density, the duo’s focus on single a sound source for each piece nevertheless yields rich results.

As is usual with the Hideous Replica label, Bypass Ideal is minimal and impassive stuff, yet engaging too, with plenty of gritty range to keep you interested. Side A is the boom box track, slithering in with a serpentine, almost greasy hiss. I suspect from the slightly stuttering movement that it’s a tape loop of some sort (this would fit with the pair’s previous MO) and it spends the first section gradually degrading into a fizzing vapour of over excited particles. Perhaps this is what being inside a kettle feels like?

Apparently there’s no signal processing used in the making of these pieces, and so it’s intriguing to ruminate on whether the variations and degradations in the sound as the loops cycle through are because the loops themselves are playing out unreliably, or due to some boom box wrangling in real time by Cuellar and Kramer themselves. It’s pretty cool to listen to in any case, especially around the halfway mark as the pitch increases to a kind of microbial fury before shifting, first into a bubbly liquid bloop and then a sparse, windy puff. Then, right at the end, there’s a strange, sine-like tone, as if the whole thing were being beamed back up to the mother ship. Yeah.

Side B’s prepared pump organ sounds are a tougher, more metronomic from the off, with a thudding, fan-like oscillations that aren’t a million miles away from the granular composition on the other side. Then everything changes, with an abrupt switch into a rusty, dissonant drone, unlike anything I’ve ever heard from a pump organ, more like a corroded fan belt on some rusty machine, groaning its way into oblivion.

Towards the end, we do get some actual pump-action sounds, although it’s not exactly Neil Young dragging us through funereal-paced renditions of his classic hits, thankfully. Instead these gassy whooshes bluster up out of the whirring backdrop in a hectic bluff, like some ancient general blathering up out of his chair in the depths of his private members club, moustache quivering and monocle hazing up with the effort, before sinking back into the warm embrace of sleep, his senile dreams of carnage a solitary comfort in the long twilight of his decline.” –Paul Margree, We Need No Swords (2015)

“In an edition of 100 copies, finally, there is Coppice, with 'Bypass Ideal'. Coppice is Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer and so far I have been enjoying their work a lot (see Vital Weekly 882, 892, 921 and 991). Their work is what we could process music, in which the pump organ plays an important role, along with various ways to make recordings of this, and complex systems to do a playback. This is one of the few releases that is granted a few words on the website: "Bypass (2013) called for a heavily amplified live duo performance of modified boombox and prepared pump organ against a focal verging image. It's one of Coppice's first compositions to exclude signal processing. Instead, each part changes progressively while developing independently.  We've recorded and isolated each part and placed them on opposing sides of a tape to further evade the intended mode of listening of the piece as a duo performance. Instead, we offer a retrospective listening. We call this listening separation Bypass Ideal. Levels of intensity, tension, and intentions present in the live performance can be found in the separate sides of the Bypass Ideal tape, and in the inseparability of the reconjoined duo from the video projection (available for streaming for holders of the tape.)" I must admit I am not entirely what all of that means but the music sounds once again quite fascinating. Both sides have a drone like quality to it, mildly distorted and very minimal in development. It seems to be staying in the same place but then: it doesn't. If you open up your ears and listen closely you will note minimal changes. But you can also decide to sit back and enjoy this mild distorted drone-scape to pass something that one can enjoy as well as ignore (like Eno intended). It's probably the most minimalist piece I heard from them so far. It is once again an excellent piece of tape transformations of acoustic sounds and very much in a live concert context. Coppice is a name to watch out for!” –Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly (2015)

“Bypass Ideal split one of their boom box/pump organ performances in twain, effectively destroying the performance in favor of focusing on its building blocks, all the way down, it seems, to the atomic level.” –Lucas Schleicher, Dusted Magazine (2016)

"Coppice est certainement le projet le plus étonnant que j'ai entendu ces dernières années. Aussi bien au niveau sonore qu'au niveau conceptuel ou éditorial, Joseph Kramer et Noé Cuellar ne cessent de proposer des choses nouvelles, innovantes, intelligentes et pertinentes. Depuis environ 5 ans, je suis avidement  l'actualité de ce duo et suis toujours comblé par chacunes de ses éditions, même plus en fait, au fil des années, j'admire de plus en plus ce duo pour ses propositions toujours plus innovantes et en vient à le considérer comme un des projets les plus importants de cette décennie.

La dernière chose que j'ai entendu donc de Coppice, c'est une étrange cassette nommée Bypass Ideal. Etrange dans la forme comme dans le contenu. Formellement, ce qui est surprenant c'est que cette cassette provient d'un enregistrement live qui a été divisé en deux. La performance originale était une commande pour ghetto blaster et harmonium, réalisée en 2013. Coppice a décomposé cet enregistrement en deux parties : la partie harmonium étant sur une face, et la partie ghetto blaster sur l'autre. On se retrouve avec deux parties qui, à l'origine, doivent être entendues simultanément, mais qui ici sont séparées pour une nouvelle écoute domestique, sans possibilité de restitution de la version originale... Coppice joue sur l'obscur rôle des enregistrements et de l'écoute quotidienne. Des disques censées restituer des performances, des compositions, mais qui ne peuvent s'écouter que dans un contexte (chez nous) sur lequel les artistes n'ont aucun pouvoir.

Au niveau du contenu, je n'avais encore jamais entendu ce fameux duo jouer sur quelque chose d'aussi minimaliste et austère. Les deux faces sont deux évolutions parallèles de sonorités froides, simples, sales. Une sorte de bourdon avec un peu de bruit blanc, linéaire, qui évolue très peu, sans transformation, sans effets, et une autre sorte de drone tout aussi linéaire, avec quelques notes épurées, lointaines, grises. Le duo explore ici un nouveau paysage sonore mystérieux, étrange et paradoxal. Il explore un espace rebutant par son austérité mais tout de même absorbant. Ca nous absorbe parce que la composition va tout de même au-delà du drone et de formes convenues dans les musiques électroniques ou électroacoustiques. Le son change minutieusement, pendant de longues durées, avant de passer brutalement une porte et de se retrouver dans un autre territoire. C'est absorbant parce qu'il se passe toujours quelque chose, quelque chose de minutieux parfois, quand notre rêverie n'est pas sauvagement interrompue pour passer à une autre texture sans avertissement.

Et quand on n'arrive pas à prévenir ce qui va suivre, c'est bon signe pour moi. Quand la musique nous plonge dans un état d'attente, de questionnement et de tension tout en utilisant un minimum de moyens, le tout avec des sons entendus nulle part ailleurs, c'est qu'on est face là à quelque chose de vraiment réussi, de créatif, inventif, intelligent et tout ce que l'on veut, mais pas face à une expérimentation conventionnelle.” –Julien Héraud, Improv Sphere (2016)