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EVA-MARIA HOUBEN + JOHN HUDAK

Paloma Wind

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German composer Eva-Maria Houben and American sound artist John Hudak present Paloma Wind, a fascinating new collaborative work.

This piece concentrates on the act of listening and on the process of a gradual emergence of a “we” (including both composers and listeners), which is based on the longings for a free and unlimited listening experience allowing various kinds of associations, visions and day-dreams. The two composers in co-operation are listeners—and the listeners will become composers while listening. Therefore, the composers do not try to describe in a detailed way the origin of the basic sounds and the work of converting sounds. A precise description would not allow people to imagine freely for themselves.

The composers focus on the development of a community of listeners and on the quality of the material. The piece sounds out the aesthetic potential of the sounds and attempts to sensitize the ear of the listener to the acoustic possibilities. The aim is to support inner and outer listening. Following this path to free listening, sonic material and musical material melt. In our listening, we may find mixtures of various sounds belonging to different social, cultural, musical, sonic environments. All kinds of objects are suitable to widen our sensitivity.

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Catalog:
LINE_150
Format:
digital
Edition:
open edition
Release:
March 2024
Tracklist:

1. Paloma Wind 1 (06:01)
2. Paloma Wind 2 (15:17)
3. Paloma Wind 3 (10:31)
4. Paloma Wind 4 (10:07)

Eva-Maria Houben:
The harmonium used in the recordings was an Indian Harmonium Paloma.

Recorded in Messelbroek, Belgium on 14th June 2023 on a Zoom H8 Handy recorder with the wonderful assistance of Guy Vandromme.  Additional thanks to “Klangraum” Düsseldorf, Germany, where I had the chance to have rehearsals with this instrument many years before.

John Hudak:
Midi programming, recording, mixing and mastering via Ableton Live  and Steinberg Wavelab Pro (Mac OS Versions), additional field recordings, cover photo and selfie by John Hudak 2023-2024.

Eva-Maria Houben studied Music Education at Folkwang-Musikhochschule Essen (Germany) and the organ with Gisbert Schneider. From 1993 until 2021 Professor Houben has been lecturing at Dortmund University’s Institut für Musik und Musikwissenschaft, focusing on both music theory and contemporary music.

As she is related to the wandelweiser group of composers, her compositions are published by edition wandelweiser, Haan (Germany). Her list of compositions includes works for solo instruments, ensembles, orchestra, voice solo or accompanied by instruments, voice and orchestra, choir, electroacoustic music. She has presented her work in the USA, Europe (UK, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Finland, Italy), and Asia.

evamariahouben.de
wandelweiser.de

John Hudak is an American sound artist known for his experimental approach to soundscapes. Hudak began his career in the 1980s and has since released numerous albums and collaborated with various artists and musicians from around the world. His work often incorporates found sounds and field recordings, creating immersive, abstract compositions that challenge traditional notions of music.

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REVIEWS OF
Paloma Wind

  • Paloma Wind is one of the year’s most mystifying albums, and it makes sense given the uncompromising vision of the artists involved. John Hudak is, among other things, a field recordist who is uninterested in any semblance of purity. Some of his most arresting pieces feature mangled field recordings that turn ordinary landscapes into cryptic terrain. His collaboration with Merzbow considers everyday sounds as a source of disorienting noise. In 1998, he released a track called “Winter Rain Watching the Sky From My Window” and it arrives as little more than austere, glitching electronics. Composer Eva-Maria Houben has numerous works that are simple, spacious, and long, providing opportunities to lean into the very minute qualities of a given instrument (she has released music on Edition Wandelweiser). And while her albums have featured the sounds of nature, some have been more deliberately focused on environments: 2013’s Landscapes contains one composition for “organ and train,” while Seascape from the same year is 75 minutes of water in various states of movement.

    What immediately stands out about Paloma Wind is that it feels like a decidedly different sort of album than the ones that either artist typically makes. “Paloma Wind 1” has field recordings that are garbled and repeated. There are multiple rhythms constantly overlapping: a shuffled movement, gong-like bells, the patter of water, various birds and insects. It creates a sound collage that allows for different layers of perception: the more you focus on an individual facet, the more you realize it is intermingling with another one.

    “Paloma Wind 2” is more spare but no less interesting. The bell-like sounds appear again and dot the landscape, and it sounds like little more than having your recording device capture a relatively still environment. Concentrating on the hum of the air is fascinating: it requires effort to focus on its quiet buzz, and doing so magnifies the gravity of every other sound’s kinetic energy. It feels like all this sound is rushing into your ears.

    The following two tracks are illusory, causing one to reflect on their differences from previous tracks. “Paloma Wind 3” sounds like everything is recorded from across a giant industrial space, and that sense of distance makes it easy to revel in the way every single note reverberates. “Paloma Wind 4” sounds a lot like what we heard in the second track but clearer: the noise floor is higher, the bells and creaks are louder in the mix, and even the typical field recordings pop out. It is simultaneously the most easy to decipher—you get a real sense of the clatter being made in real-time—and most deceptively beguiling. There’s a sort of magic to the way the chimes ring out, and you feel how weighty it is when the album fades to silence and you contend with the sounds in your own immediate surroundings.
    —Joshua Minsoo Kim, Toneglow

  • Dem eben erwähnten Windhaften sehen sich auch EVA-MARIA HOUBEN + JOHN HUDAK verpflichtet und nennen ihr gemeinsames Werk daher “Paloma Wind” (beide Line). Rauchend Rauschendes, knisternd Schimmelndes, klimpernd Schabendes geschickt verbunden in einer wirklichen Zusammen (!) Arbeit.
    —westzeit.de

  • Spellbinding, spectral elisions of percussion and field recordings by veteran minimalists Houben & Hudak make a sterling new addition to Richard Chartier’s label, LINE

    For just shy of a quarter century, LINE has specialised in seeking enchanting sounds from the thresholds of minimalist composition, computer music, drone, and their experimental integers. German composer and musicologist Eva-Maria Houben (b. 1955) and US sound artist John Hudak (b. 1958) here play into the label’s filigree strands of experimentation with one of its best in recent memory, developing a free-associated sound from percussion and etheric sound that can’t be full attributed tone or the other, but manifests its own tongue-tip language of rhytmelodic frissons that recalls Harry Bertoia’s steel rod Sonambient sound sculptures played by friendly ghosts. Approaching the project with a deeply shared sound sensitivity, they produce a remarkably engaging suite from the process of listening as composition, and vice-versa, that requires no prior knowledge of their concept in order to enjoy its hallucinatory frolics, which are bound to be enjoyed by fans of Marina Rosenfeld, Giuseppe Ielasi, Michael Ranta.
    — boomkat.com