For over a decade, trombonist/composers Mattie Barbier and Weston Olencki have consistently pushed the outer limits of what brass instruments are capable of. Working in the spaces between contemporary composition, drone, noise, and electroacoustics, RAGE has sought to emulate the electronic with acoustic means, transforming their trombones from orchestral accompaniment into a high density wall of resonance. Tilth soil marks a new direction from their previous work. Instead of merely playing the horn with unconventional techniques, the duo physically uses the instruments (and a bevy of microphones) in order to extend the horns’ vibrational spectrum. They shift the trombone away from its place as a clarion call into a stethoscopic ear, listening from where an instrument normally speaks. Buoy sounds from microphones placed inside two horns while they float in the harbor of Bergen, Norway. The lamps are going out uses room resonance captured at the Museum of Jurassic Technology to house overlain, multilayered excerpts of JUZ (A Yodel Cry) by Wolfgang von Schweinitz, the work acting as a tribute to Barbier’s mentor and predecessor at the California Institute of the Arts.
By digging deep into the physical processes of their instruments, RAGE seeks to uncover a wide field of sonic possibilities, blurring the boundaries between human breath and air-powered sound. Tilth soil presents this new material in a visceral, dimensionally-sculpted relief.
