Francisco Meirino                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Anthems For Unsuccessful Winners

REVIEWS

... a music that explores the limits of sound research ... Meirino pushes himself fervently into the dark per tug of a complicated and conceptual sonic avant-garde with results so brilliant that he is sometimes able to redefine the very existence of sound as we know it (or believe we know) ... the principle governing the composers praxis is processing what is not supposed to be recorded, and its a beautiful and adventurous prospect if undertaken with rigour and fear... one might object that one cant understand where the art is in this mess of electrostatic discharges, insane oscillators, modified and altered samples, abused low and high frequency filters and left free to occupy the available sound space...

(Alieno de Bootes, July 2023)

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In 2019, Francisco Meirino from Switzerland and Jerome Noetinger from France did a concert (I think) at the La Becque Residency Center in Switzerland, mixed in 2021 in Lausanne and Rives. I assume the cities where these musicians live. Armed that day for recording, Meirino brought in a modular synthesizer, field recorder and microphones and Noetinger his trusted Revox B77, electronics, radio, CD player and tapes. Maybe this wasn't a concert but a residency for a few days, resulting from their collaboration. As I am playing this release several times, it dawned on me (I am known to be a slow thinker) that I grip a lot about improvised music, but, obviously, this is a work of improvised music. But then, as a sort of radical live-action musique concrète work that I enjoy very much, their approach is that 'we take no hostages'; they go in at full force, with sounds bursting and cracking, explosions left and right. I don't know if Noetinger, in his set-up of live loop montage, also adds sounds from Meirino to the melee. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Sounds are cut short, vanish in a hole in the ground, or are shot up in the sky. Don't think this is a noise release, far from it; these men also know to have moments of careful approach, in which they sparsely use sounds, but it all sits next to a more brutalist process, in which they go all the way. It is not a harsh noise per se but fiercely loud. And yes, all of this is very much improvised, but this is the kind of improvisation that I enjoy very much. It is on the same level as noise music when it's done correctly; then I am all for it, and in that respect, this is not only improvised music but also noise music. Electro-acoustic music without the care and protection, but with some moments of reflective sparseness. This is forty-two minutes of sonic bliss. That's how I liked them best.
(Vital Weekly - FdW)

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Neither of these decorated artists need any introduction, and neither does Drainage, as it turns out; part one immediately kicks things off with a web of supercharged concrète that consistently highlights both Meirino’s trademark intensity and Noetinger’s virtuosic tape technique. This isn’t the first time they’ve worked together—back in 2012, Noetinger commissioned “Techniques of Self-Destruction” for that year’s l’Audible Festival in Paris, and then much more recently the two contributed remixes to the Lingua Corrente Reworks tape compilation and released a 2020 trio live recording with Antoine Chessex as Maiandros—but it is their first duo meeting, and thus the stamp of quality ensured by each is doubled up. Those same stamps guarantee that this won’t sound quite like anything either artist has done so far, because from Additive Manufacturing and The Blind Match to Genève / Paris and La Cave des Etendards, both allow for their approaches and ideas to be shaped by their collaborator in order to generate the most singular results possible. This is absolutely the case here; Drainage operates via a musical language built from scratch, one that mobilizes processed glitches, emf interference, and other razor-sharp microsounds in a sonic sandstorm beset by lengthier samples and field recordings. Though the overall sound is a futuristic one, made possible by the more than sixty years concrete music has existed, plenty of homage is paid to the deepest roots of the tradition: fleeting theatrical audiodramas in part three, the barrage of Henry-esque creaking wood at the end of part five. The level of detail and totality of vision at work here are a wonder to behold.
(Noisenotmusic)