released July 13, 2011

Format: Digital file
Duration: 20 minutes
Label: Stasisfield (SF-9001)
Country: USA
Artwork: John Kannenberg
Including: Accordion, Free Reed Boxes, Inductive Mixing Table I, Shruti Box (Orange), Wooden Filters/Resonators
Date: 2010-2011 (composed), March 25, 2011 (recorded), July 13, 2011 (released)

This recording mixes different recording positions in space, forming flattened perspectival documents of dispersed action.

Recorded live at Music With A View, curated by Kathleen Supové, The Flea Theater, New York City, NY, where Vinculum (Courses) was originally presented as a performed installation on March 25, 2011.

About the performed installation:

The performed installation Vinculum (Courses) presents the development of action-capture-reduction that constitutes the registration process of Vinculum, Coppice's archive of sonic artifacts. The trajectory of live sound shedding into reproductions is exemplified also as a spatial path through the diffusion of audio over multiple speakers away from the source instrument.

In the first stage, thirteen brass free reeds are sequentially activated by the mouth while being recorded. Each recording is then electronically processed live, and introduced into eight speakers. In the second stage, the process is repeated but with each free reed activated by means of bellows and a tubing system, which is supplemented with minimal tactile rhythms and acoustic filtering. These manual effects blend with the electronic processes that progressively hollow out and transform the audio. By the third stage the original recorded material has integrally evolved and become segmented. Finally, Pivot, a minimalist accordion passage, is played to reprise the original onset. The piece dissipates in the spread of events and long silences.

Composed by Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer.

Thank you to John Kannenberg and Kathleen Supové.

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

Side effects:

"Chicago-based duo Coppice premiered this piece as a multichannel performance at New York's Music With a View 2011. A delicate mixture of bellows and processed reeds, Vinculum (Courses) structures its subtle sounds within a thinly glazed concotion of sonic events and silences. Elements are introduced, combined, shifted and manipulated until an accordion reprises the initial thematic material, leaving the piece to quietly evaporate. Fragile in its beauty, firm in its construction, the piece challenges and rewards in equal measure." –John Kannenberg, Stasisfield (2011)

“The netlabel Stasisfield, at stasisfield.com, run by John Kannenberg, has ventured deep into rarefied sonic territory in the past, but its current release may be its most sonically remote yet. Recorded by Coppice, a duo from Chicago, it is an extended survey of small tones. Coppice is Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer, and they based the work, titled Vinculum (Courses), on what is described as “bellows and processed reeds” (the full materials were, apparently, an “8-channel installation with shruti box, free reeds, accordion, acoustic filters, and electronics”). As those materials might suggest, the sounds are delicate, venturing into the realm of pure tone, one after another, starting so quiet as to be mistaken for dog whistles, and slowly growing in intensity. Two things come into focus as the work proceeds. One is how the general absence of an attack, of a strong initial sonic signature, draws attention to textures within the tones. The other is how the concept of “intensity” itself is a purely relative one, because as “present” as the work becomes, that is largely in contrast with just how fragile it was when originated.” –Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet (2011)