Responses

released September 10, 2022

Sun Yizhou: no-imput preamp
Zhu Wenbo: clarinet (E, L), toy piano (C, M), cassette player (C, H), transducers (D, H), microphone (D), snare drum (D, H), guitar (H)

Recorded by Zhu Wenbo at his home on April 9, 2022.
Mixed by Sun Yizhou and Zhu Wenbo
Mastered by Zhu Wenbo
℗ & © 2022 zappak zappak-002

"We spent a whole afternoon in my living room. We did not play together, but took turns to record some short solo sessions, each one was seven minutes around. Every session could be seen as a response to the former one. After that Sun Yizhou selected and paired them as some duos, and I did the mixing work. Some sessions have not been used." -Zhu Wenbo


Sun Yizhou (孙一舟) and Zhu Wenbo (朱文博), both living in Beijing, China, did the slightly unusual recording project at Zhu's home in April 2022. That was about 7 minutes of performance by one person, and responding to the previous performance, the next one was performed. And the performances were repeated again and again. The solo recordings collected through these "responses" were mixed by Sun and Zhu, and formed the shapes of the pseudo duo sessions.
The sound of the no-input preamp by Sun has the character of distinctive undulations, and it also functions as a foundation in each session and always plays an important role. Zhu, on the other hand, uses a variety of musical instruments to add different colors to each session. By the exquisitely breathtaking performances and their developments, the fact that each sound was recorded separately would surprise us. (zappak.tumblr.com)


The other new release is by two musicians from China, one of whom are also new to me. Sun Yizhou plays a no-input preamp, and Zhu Wenbo plays the clarinet (E, L), toy piano (C, M), cassette player (C, H), transducers (D, H), microphone (D), snare drum (D, H), guitar (H). he letters refer to the tracks. Six in total, each about seven minutes. Yizhou uses mostly electronic devices, and Wenbo is all about instruments, composition, and improvisation. He has some music on various compilations by Ftarri. Their music was recorded in Wenbo’s living room, but they weren’t playing together. In turn, each recorded a solo session as a response to the previous. Yizhou selected and stuck them together as duo pieces, and Wenbo did the final mix. That is quite a different way of working. You can wonder what the difference is between playing improvised music together or one after another, certainly when the results are as alien as they are on this CD. At times it seems as if none of this really works, with sounds baring not much of a relation. But there is also a mysterious component to this music. Hissing, plinking, plonking, I marvelled at the strangeness of all of this. At times, it has nothing to do with improvisation, but it seems to be all about the concept. In that respect, the concept of playing these pieces not together but in a call-and-response way proves to be very effective. I see this working as a method by other people and different instruments. -Frans de Waard (vitalweekly.net/1358)



When I listen to abstract improvised music like this, I often find myself wondering exactly what’s going on or what it is that I’m hearing. I’m not usually looking for an accurate answer, just one that can help me understand and appreciate the music. When I was listening to the fifth track of this album, I found that Sun Yizhou and Zhu Wenbo had come together in a nice electroacoustic harmony, I felt a sense of oneness. I wondered how they accomplished this – I saw that Zhu Wenbo had played a cassette player on this track, so I thought that perhaps he had recorded Sun Yizhou’s performance and was now playing it back alongside it. I found this to be an interesting answer that my brain came up with, because I was already aware that it couldn’t possibly be the case.

Responses wasn’t recorded live, they took turns. The recording session went like this: one of them performed a brief improvisation, and then the other one performed their own improvisation in response to that, and then the other one performed their own improvisation in response to that one, and etc. Each improvisation was about seven minutes, so one by each performer was selected and they were then layered to make each of this album’s six tracks. This duo isn’t the first to do a “blind improvisation duo” by pairing up recordings, but their response-based system pushes their sound a bit closer, but also further, from a traditional live recording.

In a live performance, the musicians usually respond to each other. A sound made by Performer A might trigger a sound in Performer B. Performers pay attention to each other’s performances so they can complement one another and co-steer the performance, it’s a non-stop conversation of gestures and responses. A blind duo can be interesting because it detaches from that – it features two performers both doing their own thing, responding to nothing, so rather than coming together as a conversation it comes together as two overlaid monologues. Responses manages to find a third perspective though, or perhaps somewhere in between. In Responses, each performer listens to their pair’s entire performance before giving theirs, allowing them to respond to the performance as a whole rather than to individual moments of it.

There is no live musical communication between performers here. There can’t be, it would be a temporal impossibility. Instead, there’s understanding in between them. The performers take their time to listen and appreciate their partner’s music while they consider their own performance and how they should respond, rather than using their partners sounds as instant musical prompts. Instead of being a conversation of sounds, it’s an interaction made from mutual understanding of each other’s personalities and aesthetic practices, and instead of live reactions, it’s thoughtful responses compressed together in time.

One important piece of information regarding this recording practice was left out though – it’s not stated in which order any of this was recorded, so the listener is unaware which performer is responding to which. The only solution that has made sense to me is to assume another impossibility – both performers are responding to each other, they’re both the second performer. In each of these tracks they come together so comfortably that I really don’t have a better guess. I think that a lot of what makes their recordings fuse so well is that that shared understanding that came from this recording project goes beyond the responses – a knowledge of their partner’s previous performance grants some clairvoyance into their next performance by offering an understanding of their way of working as well as their way of responding. In this sense, there kind of is a communication between performers like there would be in a live setting, it’s just been stretched and dissected.

On each of the six tracks, Sun Yizhou plays the no-input preamp. Even moreso than other no-input and feedback musicians, he plays with an extremely limited palette primarily consisting of pitched statics, electric bumps and line noise – but to me he feels fully in control of these sounds, like the small palette and limited options of the instrument allow him to perfectly refine his sounds. They’re splendid performances of soft noise, threatening but not aggressive. This precise style of playing also creates some uniformity between the tracks which makes the various responses interesting to compare – both because they let Zhu Wenbo try responding to similar sounds in several ways, and because they let Sun Yizhou respond to several different sounds in similar ways.

Zhu Wenbo plays a few different instruments depending on the track, including clarinet, toy piano, transducers and more, but somehow his performances never feel so different from each other. I think this is because every one, despite being performed differently, was a response to the same performer using the same instrument – on every instrument he picks up, Zhu Wenbo tries his best to channel Sun Yizhou’s no-input preamp, and it works! It’s remarkable to hear a clarinet or a snare drum so naturally sit alongside improvised electric fuzz, but every time they feel like multiple elements of the same musical system, like they really do belong together.

Responses is an album that I’ve enjoyed a little more every time I listen to it. It’s refreshing to hear two musicians understanding and appreciating each other so well, and to start their music project from that. It makes for music that contains a lot of both personalities without feeling self-indulgent. However, I wonder how much of this mutual understanding is inside my own head – can’t the human brain see any two things together and imagine them as connected? Isn’t it natural to look for coherence when none exist? Can’t it see chaos and perceive unity, or hear two overlaid recordings as one? Possibly, but none of those questions make me appreciate this music less because I do feel oneness here, and in my ears these performers come together like two peas in a pod, like a chemical reaction where two bodies are fused and a single electroacoustic spirit, held together by their mutual understanding, is formed. -Connor Kurtz (harmonicseries.org)