Trash Music

is a piece for voice, instrumental ensemble (cello, accordion, bass clarinet, electric guitar) and objectophones. Objectophones are everyday articles, worn out or broken down, whose sound is subjected to live electronic transformations. “... no objects are ‘waste’ by their intrinsic qualities, and no objects can become waste through their inner logic. It is by being assigned to waste by human designs that [they] acquire all the mysterious, awe-inspiring, fearsome and repulsive qualities listed above” (Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives. Modernity and Its Outcasts). In Trash Music, waste acquires the status of fully functional music instruments. The instruments I use in my composition include: an airophone (a clothes airer), lampophone (a small desk lamp), brushophone (a chimney brush), heaterophone (the metal cover of a Junkers water heater), eggophone (an egg chopper), boxophone (a cardboard box), plateophone (an OHS instruction for the use of xenon arc lamps, printed on a metal plate), a tapeophone (an Unitra reel-to-reel recorder), and stackophone (a hi-fi stack system). The choice of appropriate objects and techniques of sound production, suitable amplification by means of contact microphones, and MAX environment electronic sound transformation provide the composer with wide possibilities of expression, articulation, colour, and dynamic shaping. The musicians control both the parameters of sound transformation and the very source of sound. Unlike most instruments and drivers used in electronic music, objectophones produce sound not by manipulating silencers or turning knobs, but in the process of physically playing the instrument, which is more precise, more intuitive, and also calls for specific performance skills.

The textual layer of my composition makes use of cultural waste, i.e. of rejected, useless mass media content (Fakt tabloid, commercials, internet fora, telemarketing). The work was composed in collaboration with Robert Pludra from the Faculty of Design, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, who designed the stands for the objectophones. The installation consisting of objectophones has both a visual role and a definite function, as it ensures the suitable ergonomics of playing the objectophones. The composition was commissioned by ForMusic foundation and premiered on 22 March 2014 during the 43rd Poznań Music Spring. The commission was cofinanced as part of the Collections – Compositional Commissions programme of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, implemented by the Institute of Music and Dance.

Wojciech Błażejczyk

 

Trash Music – text

Why does pretty Kathy

so rarely wear

the glistening ring she got from her beloved

She thoroughly hid this token of love from public view

 

Read the attached leaflet before use or consult a physician or a pharmacist, since misuse of medication endangers your life and health.

 

We kindly inform

that

in order to improve the quality

of our services

today’s concert

is being recorded.

If you do not consent

you are requested

 

to leave the hall

 

My husband excels in buying food that we don’t need. Just send him to buy a few buns, milk and flour, some fruit—and he is sure to return with a huge basket full of juice in cartons, jams (though the preserves I made myself stand forgotten on the shelf), several loaves of bread and so many buns that we cannot possibly eat all this ....

I buy children’s magazines—well, we don’t need them, but they add those bonus gadgets and my elder one likes them, so I buy them from time to time if I can’t stop myself ....

 

The clothes are a real tragedy. I have just found out my son has several T-shirts he’s grown out of before he ever managed to wear them. ...

Whenever I see a sale or discount prices in a chain shop, especially in my favourite chain, I always buy something new, even if my children’s wardrobe overflows with clothes. I’ve just got my two daughters a new stack of clothes for the warmer season, perhaps even for the next year ....

The kitchen is my own kingdom, so I pick up all that’s related to it, without thinking—from another baking tray (because it has a different shape, for instance) to cookery books.