more from
New Focus Recordings
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

[speaking in a foreign language]

by James Díaz & Julia Jung Un Suh

supported by
  • Streaming + Download

    Pre-order of [speaking in a foreign language]. The moment the album is released you’ll get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card
    releases April 19, 2024

      $10 USD  or more

     

1.
atardecer en 8-bits
2.
they became his angels
3.
INSIDE THE BOX
4.
Fire walk with me
5.
Periodo tres
6.
[Speaking in a foreign language]
7.
PINK ROOM
8.
Noche digital
9.
they don’t see us
10.
todos los dias son viernes

about

Composer James Díaz releases his debut recording, [speaking in a foreign language], an album length collaboration with violinist Julia Jung Un Suh. The layered, processed, and reorganized violin material results in a psychedelic audio experience that places the violin in a reflective hall of mirrors, sometimes distorted and sometimes luminous.

From the scintillating, prismatic opening pitches of James Díaz’ [speaking in a foreign language], it excavates new sonic territory for an electroacoustic work. The piece vacillates between immersive textures and dialogic ones in which the violin and electronics comment, spar, and interact with each other; in Díaz’s words, the concept is “violin as electronics.” His frequent use of pitch shifting alters the listener’s sense of sonic reality, putting us in a hall of mirrors, or perhaps analogously through the looking glass of layered linguistic reinterpretations. His vocabulary of delays, FM synthesis, and reverb settings (all generated from Julia Jung Un Suh’s violin) are all put at the service of a quasi-ritualistic thread that runs through the album. Díaz also takes a compositional approach to the recording process itself, using immersive close-micing and expansive digital processing to stretch the expressive range of the violin. Throughout, the music retains a soulful core, with a clear expressive voice emerging from Suh’s poignant violin regardless of context.

In “atardecer in en 8-bits,” Suh’s violin tones undulate and gently collide with each other, as Díaz marshals the resources of his electronics palette to create a sinewy, synthetic chorale. At times, Suh’s violin sounds like a pipe organ, only to have its towering tones disrupted by glitchy hiccups. “they became his angels” opens with discrete acoustic violin material. Fragments of melodic and gestural ideas sigh and circle around central pitches. The electronics are heard flitting around the perimeter, high pitched ricochets pinging off the walls of an imaginary cavern. As the track evolves, the duration of the responsive sounds in the electronics increases, with searing long tones filtered through FM synthesis heard in the “distance.” “they became his angels” ends with Suh playing pointed pizzicato chords that are gradually detuned.

“INSIDE THE BOX” creates an accordion-like texture, as Suh’s harmonized violin inhales and exhales in microtonal swells. Shimmering behind these swells are quietly swirling sound objects, processed from circular bowing gestures. While central pitches emerge from the wavelike texture, they appear within constellations of pitch areas, as Díaz constantly changes harmonic direction and context with the introduction of a new collection.

“Fire walk with me” opens with a driving figure in the violin that alternates between a repeated note and a higher answering pitch. The electronics respond with triggered, stuttering delays and tolling overtone series based bell sounds. Suh begins to play a double stop figure that accelerates and decelerates as its inner voice moves in microtonal increments.

“Periodo tres” brings the focus back initially to the tactility of the acoustic violin sound, with a series of ricochet bowing gestures. The music goes through sonic looking glass just after the three minute mark, and the violin seems to recede behind a filter and into a processed haze. The title track suggests a quasi-chaconne harmonic progression at its opening, cycling through a similar set of sonorities as they vary, both in the violin techniques as well as the electronics processing. Later, the electronics are in a close, symbiotic rhythmic relationship with the violin, shrouding attacks in glistening pitch artifacts.

Like “Fire walk with me,” “PINK ROOM” activates the electronics through an insistent, repeating figure in the violin, this time starting high and answering low. “PINK ROOM” fixates on a central pitch for more than four minutes, creating a harmonic wash before shifting focal points to a frequency that is surrounded by microtonal inflections of itself. This migration delineates the movement’s structure even as the foreground material is actively changing.

The opening violin solo in “Noche digital” hints obliquely at the fiddling tradition before turning to a dark drone of double stops and eventual electronic pedal points. It ends with an elongated rallentando, like the resultant creaking of an old swing set slowing down. “they don’t see us” features sighing gestures not unlike what is heard in “INSIDE THE BOX,” with more space between iterations that are steadily filled in by repeats with a delay effect. As the movement grows, the delays become more and more prominent, overlapping one another, and eventually overtaking the violin completely. For the first time on the album, we don’t perceive the violin sound in the foreground, and instead are swept up in an ocean of oscillating electronics.

The final short movement, “todos los dias son viernes,” is a series of minor chord articulations, each separated by four seconds of rest. Lingering behind the clearly marked chords are high register pitches that form a surreal resultant scale with subtle microtonal inflections. The trajectory of the album travels from placing violinistic elements in the fore in the opening movements, to absorbing them into the technological instrument entirely by the last two sections — process music as mapped onto timbre. The result is an elegantly seamless fusion of the violin into the electronic realm, preserving its integrity but cultivating something compelling and exhilarating.

– Dan Lippel

credits

releases April 19, 2024

Composed, recorded, recomposed, mixed, and produced by James Díaz

Mastered by Murat Çolak

Supported by Paola Buitrago

Recorded at 310 Penn Music Studio, Philadelphia, PA

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

James Diaz Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Colombian composer/sound maker. I love sonic textures, sound masses, and interactive environments.

contact / help

Contact James Diaz

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like [speaking in a foreign language], you may also like: