Durán VázquezHome, Sweet Home

All the pieces in Home, Sweet Home use soundscapes as compositional resources that are able to testify a social, historical and geographical context, to which is implicit an emotional and aesthetic component. With electronic synthesis and manipulated recordings, Durán Vázquez developed each composition from the fusion of truth and fiction, employing a well-balanced number of elements that never fill the entire gamut of frequencies but that always develop harmonics that catch the ear of the listener.

Pictures From the Atlantic City of Vigo is an electroacoustic composition with several field recordings that are assembled as shots in a cinematographic montage.

Building uses a series of succeeding recordings that follow from within each other, always finding some conceptual connection point in air, wind and pressure.

Cars is composed from synthesized sound, developing an artificial soundscape that reminds the sounds of car horns in a city.

In Alarm, Anxiety, Eagerness we can hear the young boys and girls of a grammar school over the carnival festivities. Their sounds picture an agitation that is characteristic of their age, but it is also the reflection of other social tensions, more complex and buried, that find a link in those other sounds of alarms and sirens.

In Boat Dockage the studio sounds converge with field recordings of the piers at the Cíes islands, in the Vigo estuary.

Finally, Seagulls is composed from the recordings of the colonies of birds at the Cíes islands. All the audio montage revolves around the dramatic moment when two adult seagulls attack a younger bird, breaking the peacefulness of the moment.

Credits

All tracks composed by Jorge Mantas, except track 6 by The Refractors (J. Martinez) and track 9 by Sleeping Me and Jorge Mantas. Special guests: Christina Vantzou (voice on 2, 3 & 4, rhodes on 2), Yui Onodera (piano on 8), Sleeping Me (guitar on 9), The Refractors (piano on 6). Track 8 contains a sample of a 1860 recording of Au Clair de la Lune, possibly the first recording ever of a human voice.

• All tracks composed and produced by Durán Vázquez between April and May 2008 in Vigo
• Mastered by Miguel Carvalhais
• Cover photo by Pedro Tudela

Field recordings: Winter 2007, Vigo: Demonstration. Summer 2007, Vigo: Building works; Vigo estuary: Boat travel; Cíes Islands: Boat docking, Seagulls colony, Restaurant; Orihuela: Factory at night. Autumn 2007, Vigo: Alarm. Xmas 2007, Vigo: Siren. Winter 2008, Vigo: Rain, Carnival at school. Spring 2008, Vigo: Alarm, Wind at terrace roof, Loudspeakers at school.

Thanks to Miguel Carvalhais and everybody at Crónica for their support and excellent work. Thanks to Alejandro Durán and Miguel A. García from Larraskito netlabel for their support and advices. Thanks to Berio Molina and Isaac Cordal from alg-a collective for their kind words and feedback. Thanks to everybody at Exp+LIMb0 for their support and friendship. Special thanks to Xesús Valle, Carlos Suárez, Paulo Raposo and Ricardo Reis for their friendship and advices. Most important, thanks to my family at San Amaro for always being there.

Press-release / Reviews