Trance of the Invisible Storm
Wukir Suryadi
Camouflage Trance-Kamuflase Trance
(2024)
Camouflage is a method that allows an organism that is usually seen, to be obscured so that it is difficult to distinguish from the surrounding environment because it is trying to blend with its environment.
Trance is a phenomenon in which a person is out of control of his or her own mind and is not responsive to external stimuli but is able to pursue and realize a goal.
Camouflage Trance is the process of controlling identity by manipulating mental and physical states as a way for a person to adapt to their environment, it is often used in the context of art show or ritual where an individual can create illusions for themself, or others. In this Camouflage Trance composition, musicians play or transfer the pattern of playing music of a traditional art into modern musical instruments and experimental instruments in the hope that this can affect the soul or imagination of the listener to wander in their respective fantasy realms.—Wukir Suryadi
This week, Acousmatic Crossings is stretching the boundaries of the term “Acousmatic.” You may recall that the term can be roughly translated from the Greek as sound without visible origin. Typically (if there is such a thing as “typical” in the Acousmatic space), the source of a sound is audibly stripped of any referents to its source. In other words, Acousmatic music emphasizes auditory perception over visual context.
The two Camouflage Trance pieces heard above certainly have elements of this classical definition of Acousmatic music but, unlike many of the other pieces we’ve published, you would not be completely off base by juxtaposing images of the physical object making the sound, with the sound itself. This is especially prevalent in the various percussion layers within these two pieces.
I point this out for no other reason than to contrast known sounds with other sounds that are very alien to the ear. If you listen to these works at a substantial volume (which you should) and through headphones (a requirement that I will lessen here over others in this series), you may notice the extremely complex bedrock of polyrhythms supporting, what can be described as a pure electronic hellscape overhead. These rhythms are easily identifiable with a sounding object that you strike. The fact that it’s almost impossible for the attentive listener not to perceive the rhythmic complexity that these objects are creating is something we can touch on later.
But, for now… did someone say “electronic hellscape”? Why yes, indeed! Whatever stringed instrument Suryadi is using and, however it’s being electronically treated—in my opinion moves these works firmly into the Acousmatic space. When it first presents itself in Trance A, it peeks, almost shyly from behind a corner, as if it’s unsure of itself. Parading itself from right to left in the listening field—It doesn’t take long for that self-assured nature to explode outward in a show of courage so dominating, so intensely present—that the complete nature of the piece is transformed into a blast furnace of living, breathing waveforms.
Suryadi, in what I think is a genius move—paces these primal, circuit bent screams from the endless well of pyre. Within their short pause, the listener is reminded of the non-Euclidean, many-headed mud dwelling nature of the rhythmic beating and its insistent focus on causing disturbances (especially to the Western ear) in the ability to count, the ability to quantify. This mathematical mind-fuck and its burden on the 4/4 pickled brain is soon lifted when the wired, exploding star electronic mayhem that was politely touching the aural passageways of our ears a few moments ago, returns with an unbridled fury and a decay that leaves nothing but scorched earth.
This alternating pattern of ping-ponging a featured set of polyrhythmic organized chaos punctuated with a Hendrix meets Derek Bailey stringed instrument attack continues through the B side of this album. The rhythms are varied, and the angry vibrations of strings take on a different cast but the M.O. that was established in the first piece, continues here.
If it’s possible (and it is, albeit quite difficult) to listen to this music as one flowing whole, you should try. Forget about the formal breakdown played out above and just let the experience engulf you within its black flames. The Acousmatic experience might just unveil itself because, as a single, seemingly organic entity of such force as these pieces are—the overall sound, becomes a foreign object. An object unknown, something dark, something singular in its intensity and something formless that moves ever forward.
What more can an imagination ask for?
—Michael Eisenberg
Sound is something that is alive, it will develop by itself when it has been born through the human realm. Music will evolve or die depending on how far and how strongly the work is communicated or narrated and how strong the force behind the music itself is, even though the music itself is a force.
—Wukir Suryadi
Why not dive into Wukir’s world? You can find a trove of visceral sounds and fierce imagination on his bandcamp page. It’s raw, it’s untamed—and it’s NOT background music.
I love this title: “Trance of the Invisible Storm.” I’m looking forward to listening—when the moment is right. I’m also curious how others will respond…
I hope more people listen to this—I think it’s a cross-over piece in terms of genre and hopefully that will appeal to people with tastes that may lay outside of the just strictly electronic.
Thanks Marco, I think you’ll dig it!
this is what I said on social media about it: The Acousmatic Crossings series (in the Metapsychosis Journal) has just published two very dark, and VERY intense pieces by Wukir Suryadi. Together, they comprise the album “Camouflage Trance”. I first thought of these pieces as a departure from the more electronically manipulated, classically defined “Acousmatic” works that we have presented so far but, I’ve since walked that opinion back a bit. Formally, the music can be broken down into parts produced by somewhat identifiable sound sources. For instance, the listener can marvel, while at the same time become completely befuddled by the non standard and complex polyrhythmic base layer as being produced from a percussive instrument. Same with the highly charged, Hendrix meets Derek Bailey electric hellscape that inhabits the spaces above as a guitar-like stringed instrument. However, taking the pieces as a whole, a single entity—the alien-ness comes though and, at least for me, it’s one that is imbued with a dark enigma that builds in its menace, breaking out of a cocoon into a full blown sinister energy.
That was one hell of a hellscape, @Neuroticdog. I’d call it an ecstatic one—even violently ecstatic. There is an electronic shamanistic kind of thing going on with these tracks. Listening late at night, windows closed, volume loud, I gave in and let my limbs flail—not sure I’d call it dance. But it was a tribal type of experience—a tribe of one or none. I did not experience this as sinister per se, but there were some darker, mocking, unf**kwithable forces getting liberated, that’s for sure. Counterintuitively, perhaps, I hear/feel pure joy in these tracks.
Oh wow, thx for sharing your experience Marco. One way or another, it was/is a sublime experience. Through headphones, laying down in my dark bedroom… on one of my listenings I perceived, if only for a few seconds…
A mind movie flashed me situated in a vast, nightland—forested and dank, watery mud glistening… Lovecraftian black winged rife with a raised network of veins, a vaguely human thing lighted on the chest of a person, beaked head pecking in short, sharp movements.
It snapped its head to look toward me and I Immediately burnt the image—to terrible to even squint at.
Sinister-Initiatory in some way? Violently ecstatic as you say, oh yes!
To much of the imaginal?