Nonlocal Research / Chile / 2021 / CS
Prolific painter and musician Diego Hernández, leader of pioneer Chilean experimental group La Banda's, presents his first release under his given name. Radiofonía is the record of an expedition through radiophonic and streaming transmissions looped and manipulated on the go along with tapes and YouTube selections.
The sources sampled are not treated as an instrument, but more as
a constant flow of sonic information, inevitably available, diligently articulated by the listener as a train of thought and reflection.
Here there's joy in scarcity of control, in being a single, but active receiver of information released to everyone; cautious yet permeating data that pierces every turned on radio and spectator behind it. There's joy in processing a slice of the sonic spectrum that swarms into and across the city, gathering sound and music from omnipresent fields always on call to ring. Intuition and chance facilitate certain dynamics and associations that may spark into speech or else disintegrate it. Obliteration and deterioration are tools always at hand, but Radiofonía's purpose is certainly more about channeling than thesis.
Through soundscapes and interference noises, of orchestral hints and tachism, a set of environmental samples is organized. Stage tests that take us with deference and suspense through technological twists and melodic concavities, or even introspective ones. We remember perhaps, with suspicion, a time when broadcasting had an unusual and influential power over its viewers, when the corporations in control of this medium considered their audience as a vulnerable and manipulable subject under their seductive agenda.
But passive listeners are no more, we hope.
Diego Hernández's work is proof- José Badía .