This time of Coronavirus was not entirely bad for me because I had the possibility to see my family every day and to focus on my deepest human and artistic values. I was also blessed with loads of personal time that I used to research different creative possibilities online.
My fellow musicians and sound artists Didié Nietzsche and Jules Nerbard from our band Radio Prague helped me to set the technical part of being part of the online platform Second Life.
On that platform I met Yadleen, Second Life Artist who invited me to collaborate with her on a series of tracks of hers. Our online collaboration begun with lots of e-mails… who ended in our spams! So very logically the name #TheSpamConnection was born.
This is the video I released to promote our first concert together and also to show how all the sounds are made, and all this without revealing the entire result before the official premiere. I filmed myself while improvising on Yadleen’s track Affetuoso: I launched it in Ableton Live and recorded bass flute sounds using extended techniques. In order of appearance you can hear breath sounds, key clicks, pizzicati, tongue ram, harmonics mixed with bends, multiphonics and a bit of harmonic swipe.
Both extended techniques and improvisation are for me great tools to make one’s practice richer. I like to work with the input of another artist, it gives a whole new sense to the sounds and for me this collaboration is a totally new genre, which makes my particularly happy because it broadens my horizon.
Here you can listen to the whole result, after the video I also added more extra layers of flute, in the same spirit.
The collaboration evolved into a whole set, « Opera Vibes » , that you can find entirely in this playlist. Enjoy #TheSpamConnection!
