kind words for breathing through wires by iris garrelfs

Iris Garrelfs at the Barbican

“…her music is thick with the evidence of spatial dialogue and spatial sensitivity. Garrelfs’ voice reaches forth like a hand probing the dark. Even as her utterances tumble through a web of delays and a mysterious, dislocating pitch modulation, she never loses the ability to react instantaneously to her surroundings; her demeanour tilts in response to micro-adjustments in mood or room temperature, with the echoes contracting and relaxing accordingly. The effects are as soft and breathable as she is – a moist, flexible extension of her body rather than a constrictive maze of electricity, twisting her image into something alien and animalistic while still, somehow, retaining a strong resemblance to the human form.”

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kind words for breathing through wires by iris garrelfs!

Iris Garrelfs at the Barbican

the kindness comes from acts of silence.

Vocal experimental music has a bad rap due to the proliferation of blokes screaming into microphones while being covered in chocolate syrup. Garrelfs’ work is striking contrast to the aforementioned bellowing and posturing. The first time I listened to Breathing Through Wires, I throughout the stage was filled with people working in concert to produce this fluent sound. I was wrong. Using her own vocals and maybe some other sounds, Garrelfs creates a phonic tapestry of loops upon layers to make a re-stylization of choral works.

get the album here.

pan y rosas releases breathing through wires by iris garrelfs!

Iris Garrelfs at the Barbican

iris garrelfs is a sound artist and improviser who crosses the boundaries of performance, installation and fixed media. she uses her voice as raw material for conjuring multilayered listening experiences where the voice is transmuted into machine noises, intricate rhythms, choral works, and pulverized into granules of electroacoustic babble and glitch – generating animated dialogues between innate human expressiveness and the overt artifice of digital processing.

her first album for pyr, breathing through wires, is an album of live improvised and processed voice performances recorded in the uk between 2012 and 2014. some were recorded through the mixing desk, others in the room. the titles refer to either event or venue. expect to hear a wide range of sounds and sonic modalities, from aggressive screams to delicate melodies, intricate rhythms to machine noises all constructed from and through live voice in an act of listening.

get it here!