Electroacoustic works for Halldorophone (KARLRECORDS KR118) is about the fourth release we’ve heard from Italian player Martina Bertoni. We’ve usually associated her with her chosen instrument the cello, but here she is making an electro-acoustic statement across four sides of vinyl, working at EMS Stockholm – the famed and historic experimental studio.
It’s first I’ve ever heard of a Halldorophone, but it was first built in 2008 by the artist and designer Halldór Úlfarsson in Iceland. It makes use of “positive feedback” in a way that excites the strings to drone and resonate. Since it also uses pickups and a speaker, you could call it an amplified electronic instrument too. You can see from photos of this object that it looks very spiffy, almost like a piece of modernist sculpture. You’d think more experimental musicians would be rushing to try it out, but apparently it can produce unpredictable results; for one thing you’re in danger of entering a feedback loop, which can multiply and get out of hand pretty quickly, and if you’ve ever seen electric guitarists getting carried away with their echoplex and digital delay, this is probably an even more extreme version of same. So far you could name the musicians and composers who have come to terms with this invention on the stubs of one leg, but Hildur Guðnadóttir has made good using it in her movie soundtracks (including the one for Joker, a depressing and unsatisfying movie, but the soundtrack is probably good).
Well, Martina Bertoni isn’t exactly “playing” the instrument on today’s record; it seems rather she’s using it like an analytic device, in order to take a closer look at string tunings, intervals, harmonic frequencies, and the sort of thing that (I imagine) used to excite minimalists like Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine, and others of a mathematical bent. Bertoni is quite clear that she resisted her natural instinct to start playing like a cellist, and indeed her actions were barely-perceptible – a pluck here, a strum there. What she wanted was generative feedback, and she treated the Halldorophone like a very efficient machine that creates feedback loops as easily as breathing. These experiments may have taught her something about tunings; indeed she may have successfully generated “tuned feedback” from her delicate interventions.
The notes by Kristoffer Conils go on to detail a lot more about the achievements of this album in terms of technique, microphone placement, textures and repetitions (he’s able to pinpoint the significance and meaning of certain keys), but what struck home with me is how the creator, and Thomas Herbst (the label boss of Karlrecords) called it a “chamber music record”. This was a bit of an in-joke and refers to the fact that you can hear the sounds of the room (and people breathing) on this very quiet recording, but for me it connects with her past releases, many of which are likewise solitary and enclosed and make direct reference to the space where they were recorded, in particular Music For Empty Flats. Today’s record also has the emotional depth we’ve heard in her previous records, informed by a genuine sorrow and sense of isolation. More than another “process art” composition, Electroacoustic works for Halldorophone is a highly original, moving work of art. (05/02/2025)