@c is the project which includes Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela. They collaborate as @c since 2000, composing, performing, and creating sound installations. They have released and performed extensively, often collaborating with other artists and collectives in a practice marked by radical experimentalism with computational sound.
GML Variations is their new album which is out now via Crónica. They explain:
“This album started with a commission to compose a piece for the Robotic Gamelan of Casa da Música, in Porto, to be presented with other works in a public showing spanning several days. “GML 123” was a generative system that controlled the actuators in the Robotic Gamelan while projecting several other sounds into the very resonant space of Casa da Música’s foyer. The piece was presented in January 2018 and shortly afterwards recorded in the same location. After receiving the recording, we found ourselves being drawn to it over and over and, as often happens to us, we started experimenting: revisiting the original composition, manipulating its recordings and creating new material, eventually developing the four variations and coda that complete this album.
During this process, we were unearthing echoes and memories of the first composition, transforming the original sounds to the limits of recognition, and finding structures that were already latent in, but were not expressed by, the initial piece. These pieces are therefore not six independent compositions but rather six different perspectives over a single work, six ways of listening to it.
In the course of this work, we developed a seventh piece, “Jeden, Dwa, Osiem (dla Małgorzaty)”, published in the compilation “Intermediale: Simulacra Soundscape 3”. We also performed versions of the variations in a stream for Audiotalaia during the first lockdown of 2020, in a performance with André Rangel at Rivoli, Porto (in which we worked on for almost a year, and that we first had to postpone and ultimately cancel because of the pandemic), and in a concert at Passos Manuel, Porto (released as the “GML Vars. Live” single). “GML Variations” closes this cycle of work, at least until we find ourselves drawn to this material again.”
Check the full streaming below.