The Squid's Ear Magazine


Banabila, Michel: Wah-Wah Whispers (Bureau B)

Dutch composer Michel Banabila amalgamates genres, using acoustic and electronics elements to serve his work, here in 8 recent pieces that blend electronica, world forms and soundscape in sophisticated ways, with vocal samples from all n4tural and Yuko Parris, guitar from Cok Van Vuuren, and a collaborative composition with Machinefabriek/Rutger Zuydervelt.
 

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Personnel:



Michel Banabila-composer, performer

Rutger Zuydervelt-composer, performer

Cok Van Vuuren-electric guitar

all n4tural-vocal samples

Yuko Parris-vocal samples


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UPC: 4015698104844

Label: Bureau B
Catalog ID: BB 363CD
Squidco Product Code: 30087

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2021
Country: Germany
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded by Michel Banabila.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Ever since he released his music in the early '80s, Michel Banabila has been hard to pinpoint to a specific genre or style. His musical output includes jazz, experimental cut-up electronics, world music (especially influenced by the Fourth World music as developed by Jon Hassell), New Age, eclectic pop tunes, music for dance or other stage projects, and soundtracks for TV productions.

Wah-Wah Whispers focuses on Banabila's more recent output. It is a collection of works showcasing many facets of his music: a journey visiting the minimal and cinematic sample scape in the opener Take Me There, a robotic reggae-like rhythm (Tic Tac), contemplative ambient / fourth world scenes evolving into a downright funky beat (Hidden Story), the synth version of Secunde, and more. The album ends with a kaleidoscope of atmospheres gradually building up to a noise climax in Narita (the only collaboration track on the album, with Rutger Zuydervelt / Machinefabriek)."-Bureau B



"Usually, when an artist is around for some time, there are a few compilations with the 'best-of' of early material, but on Wah-Wah Whispers by Michel Banabila this is not the case. This is a 'best of' recent work, as all pieces are from 2013 to 2020 with one from 2001. It is a selection made by Bureau B from Michel Banabila's vast catalogue from his Tapu Records, found online. Stuff that so far reached a small audience, but which, so Bureau B thinks, should be heard by more people. Quite rightly so, of course. A bigger label equals a bigger budget for promotion and (hopefully, of course) a wider audience and with the kind of music Banabila creates, I can easily see a bigger audience available; if only they knew it was out there. In the past, I, all to easily/hastily, said something about fourth world music in connection with Banabila, but that is only a small portion of the man's vast output. His electronic music covers much more than just sampled ethnic percussion and exotic mood scapes. You can them here as well, but there are minimalism and maximalism to be found here. Found voices, percussion, soundtrack-like soundscapes, dubby music (the 2001 track 'Tic Tac'), filed recordings in 'Out of sync' and in 'Hidden Story' reminded me of Jorge Reyes and O Yuki Conjugate in quite the exotic piece of music, while 'Secunde Reprise' is almost a straight forward piece of ambient house with a strong motorik sequencer. A bit of noise (controlled as it is!) we find at the end in 'Narita', which is the only collaborative piece around here, with Machinefabriek, which is a descent and ascent in the world of drones with a civilized amount of distortion in the middle. It is, altogether, the perfect introduction to this fantastic composer's recent output. If you are looking for something great and not all too strange to play when you have visitors who don't like your outer limits music collection, you should not look further."-Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly


Get additional information at Vital Weekly

Artist Biographies

"Michel Banabila, born 1961, is a sound artist, composer, and producer. Banabila releases music since 1983 and has produced musical scores for numerous films, documentaries, theatre plays and choreographies. He worked / performed in The Netherlands, Poland, Lebanon, UK, South Africa, Russia, Japan, Spain, China, USA and Belgium. Banabila is especially keen on mixing disciplines and music styles, using elements and influences from jazz, electronic music, classical and world music. Therefore there is no particular genre to categorize Banabila's music. In addition to acoustic instrumentation, Banabila uses electronics, field recordings, and snippets from radio, tv and internet. He collaborated with different types of artists like Anton Goudsmit, Erkan Oğur, Hanyo van Oosterom, Holger Czukay, Joshua Samson, Machinefabriek, Mete Erker, Oene van Geel, Radboud Mens, Salar Asid, Sandhya Sanjana, Scanner, Yaşar Saka , Eric Vloeimans, and Zenial, among others.

Besides making albums and musical scores, Banabila works with theatre, dance and visual art on more conceptual artistic projects. He builds a database with samples; uses the city environment as a recording studio, collects fragments of spoken texts, which he composes into soundscapes, audio/visual installations and performances. Using recordings of speech in several languages Banabila experiments with the tonality of words and the "sound system" of languages. Banabila worked on various projects with video artists Geert Mul, Olga Mink, and photographer Gerco de Ruijter. With Geert Mul he has an audiovisual set, Big Data Poetry, which they performed live in venues like The Barbican (London) during the Logan Symposium 2014, Yukunkun (Beirut) during the Global Week For Syria 2014, and TENT (Rotterdam) during Sound Spectrums 2012. With Olga Mink he performed at the LUX Festival (Sevilla), the VAD Festival (Girona) and the State Of The Image Festival (Arnhem) in 2006. For Gerco de Ruijter he did sound design for several stop-frame animations, like the critically acclaimed Crops, shown in the Hirhshorn Museum (2013 / Washington DC) and Ringdijk at Panorama Mesdag (2016 / The Hague)"

-Michel Banabila Website (http://www.banabila.com/biography)
11/18/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Machinefabriek is the alias of Rutger Zuydervelt. Rutger's music combines elements of ambient, noise, minimalism, drone, field recordings and electro-acoustic experiments. His pieces can be heard as an attempt to create sonic environments for the listener to dwell in. Finding tension in texture, tone and timing, the result can be very minimalistic at first glance, but reveals itself upon closer listening. The devil is in the details.

Rutger was born in 1978 in Apeldoorn (The Netherlands) and now resides in Rotterdam. He started recording as Machinefabriek in 2004. After a series of self released cd-rs, his official debut Marijn was issued in 2006, with great critical acclaim. Since than, a solid stream of music was released on labels such as Type, Important, Home Normal, 12K, Entr'acte, Dekorder, Miasmah, Consouling Sounds, Experimedia and Staalplaat. He performed all over the globe, from Canada to Israel and from Russia to Japan.

Rutger collaborated (on record and/or live) with numerous artists, such as Steinbrüchel, Jaap Blonk, Aaron Martin, Peter Broderick, Frans de Waard, Mats Gustafsson, Steve Roden, Gareth Davis, Stephen Vitiello, Michel Banabila, Dirk Serries and Dead Neanderthals, amongst many others.

He frequently works with film makers, like Makino Takashi, Mike Hoolboom, John Price, Paul Clipson and Chris Teerink, for whom he composed a soundtrack for his documentary about Sol LeWitt. Rutger also recorded the music for the Canadian drama The Cold and the Quiet from 2014. Furthermore, his music was used in Edward Burtynsky's Watermark, the drama Stone (with Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton) and Josh Fox' influential Gasland and Gasland Part II documentaries. Besides films, Rutger also composes music for dance pieces, like Alix Eynaudi and Kris Verdonck's EXIT (premiéred at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin), Alexander Whitley's The Measures Taken (for the Royal Opera in London) and Beheld (for Candoco Dance Company), and multiple pieces by Spanish/Dutch choreographer Iván Pérez. Then there's Rutgers installation work, in which the dialogue with the environment plays an important role. He did projects for Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAi (Dutch Architecture Institute), the new Armando Museum MOA, Sounds Like Audio Art in Saskatoon (Canada), the Into the Great Wide Open Festival, Netwerk in Aalst (Belgium) and children's museum Villa Zebra in Rotterdam."

-Machinefabriek Website (http://www.machinefabriek.nu/about/biography)
11/18/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Cok Van Vuuren is a guitarist & banjo player, and a photographer. He is known for the groups De Kneep, La Bande Dessinée, Lovsky, Ocobar, and The Lance Band.

-Discogs (https://www.discogs.com/artist/493520-Cok-Van-Vuuren)
11/18/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Yuko Parris is a NYC-based vocalist and electronic artist, known for her solo work and the group Cloud Ensemble.

-Squidco 11/18/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Take Me There 05:09

2. Tic Tac 07:04

3. Branches 08:06

4. Hidden Story 05:56

5. Out Of Sync 08:28

6. Secunde - Reprise 04:20

7. Wah-Wah Whispers 04:22

8. Michel Banabila and Machinefabriek - Narita 06:20

Related Categories of Interest:


Electro-Acoustic
Organized Sound and Sample Based Music
Electroacoustic Composition
Electronica
Compositional Forms
Cultural Musics from Around the World
Solo Artist Recordings
Duo Recordings
New in Experimental & Electronic Music

Search for other titles on the label:
Bureau B.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
Zuydervelt, Rutger
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Hand-numbered repress edition.
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BERG (Music for a film by Joke Olthaar)
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Machinefabriek
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EC
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