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According to Lampo’s website, “Tztztztzt Î Í Í…,” the piece Vida is premiering, is a sound poem of the same title performed by Sarah Magenheimer, Tyondai Braxton, and Vida. As best as I can determine from the composer’s description, the video component includes footage of performers in action as well as abstracted representations, both visually and sonically, of their facial movement and the sounds they made. There’s a lot of verbiage spilled about the process and motivation, but the work seems intended to cause a certain dislocation in the viewer about where and what produces certain sounds, further confounded by the relationship between sound and the everyday things that produce it. Also on the program is a sound work called “Damaged Particulates,” which combines preset and live electronics in four channels. To those locals that remember Vida’s activity in Chicago—in Central Falls, Town and Country, Singer, and as the only steady member of Bird Show—his once prominent guitar no longer seems to figure into his music-making schemes. Instead he’s devoted himself to analog synthesizer, which is how he produced both the gurgly and bulbous tones and piercing, high-end sine waves, all entirely satisfying onslaughts, on his most recent solo album, Esstends-Esstends-Esstends (Pan), from 2011. You can hear a track from it, “Qweek Plus Enner (outro too),” below.
