D a r k A m b i e n t

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 51:45] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"´I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages.´ (John Zorn)

´All growth is a leap in the dark.´ (Henry Miller)

´On stage, I am in the dark.´ (Maria Callas)

Some specialized critics occasionally relate certain Melgacian works to this sort, Dark Ambient.

Dark Ambient (in the 1980s also referred to as ambient industrial or black ambient) is a genre of post-industrial music that features foreboding, ominous, or discordant overtones, some of which were heavily inspired by elements of ambient music. The term was coined in the early 1990s by Roger Karmanik to describe the music of Raison d'être and is strongly associated with the Cold Meat Industry record label.

Often consists of evolving dissonant harmonies of drones and resonances, low frequency rumbles and machine noises, sometimes supplemented by gongs, percussive rhythms, bullroarers, distorted voices and other found sounds, oft processed to the point where the original sample cannot be recognized. For instance, entire works may be based on radio telescope recordings (Arecibo Trans-Plutonian Transmissions), the babbling of newborn babies (Nocturnal Emissions Mouths of Babes), or sounds recorded through contact microphones on telegraph wires (e.g. Alan Lamb's Primal Image). It's the purposeful case of the now focused album.

[Apropos, O.M. had done something similar before, as it was in Dronology.

melgacootacilio.bandcamp.com/album/dronology-otac-lio-melga-o-duration-01-10-31

Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist musical genus that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harmonic variations throughout each piece compared to other musics. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as ´the sustained tone branch of minimalism´.]

As the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist has no commitments with rigidly demarcated styles; as he always feels liberated to address innumerable sonic dialects and with a pioneering spirit (not allowing himself to be attached to schools or labels): seems to me a challenging and very exciting act when, from references that respectable music supporters suggest have in some of his creations, Otacílio points its creative verve to one or the other and then give us a personal thought-provoking version, as if it were the fragment of a dialogical discourse. Most of the time, O.M. gets ahead, as every great artist does, and brings us (revealing, iconoclastic, ascending) quests. From time to time he reverses this praxis and presents us with answers. Even darker. More than replies, a place; surrounding.

We are in his Darker Ambient.

Although it contains deliberately many typical elements of the sound syntax from which I made my prologue, such profound environment is not (if in a deprecatory purport) a niche of isolation, confinement, melancholy or desert. It´s inevitable to draw a parallel between Otacílio Melgaço and Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.

Tanizaki was one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, and perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. And so we are introduced to 礼 讃 讃 讃 (In'ei Raisan), or Praise of Shadows. The essay consists of 16 sections that discuss traditional Japanese aesthetics in contrast with change. Comparisons of light with darkness are used to contrast Western and Asian cultures. The West, in its striving for progress, is presented as continuously searching for light and clarity, while the subtle and subdued forms of oriental art and literature are seen by Tanizaki to represent an appreciation of shadow and subtlety, closely relating to the traditional Japanese concept of sabi. In addition to contrasting light and dark, Jun'ichirō further considers the layered tones of various kinds of shadows and their power to reflect low sheen materials like gold embroidery, patina and cloudy crystals. He distinguishes between the values (plenty audiblely developed by O.M.) of gleam and shine ...

In few words: the best place to make a Praise of Shadows is, here and now, the Melgacian Dark Ambient ... owing to the fact that ... if the text of the Nipponese writer presents personal reflections on topics as diverse as architecture and its fittings, crafts, finishes, jade, food, cosmetics, mono no aware (the art of impermanence - by the way, also present in the heart of the flux of the Melgacian progenies) and explores in close description the use of space in buildings, lacquerware by candlelight, monastery toilets and women in the dark of a brothel as ´a classic description of the collision between the shadows of traditional Japanese interiors and the dazzling light of the modern age´: O.M. accomplishes a sonic immersion in the mysterious intricacies that the shadows offer us as the answer given to a Sphinx so that we can move on. And we go on. The response to the enigma is correct. We will not be devoured by the mythical creature (with the head of a human, the haunches of a lion, and sometimes the wings of a bird), but by the very Darkness-in-progress.

´In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them.´ (J.T.)

Melgaço obscures the compositional/performative atmospheres until any worthlessness is extirpated. The shading as a debugging. It makes us return to everything that´s quintessential;

´We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce, then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.´ (J.T.)

Blind, sightless, unsighted, unseeing, visually impaired, visionless, unquestioning, rabid ... If our eyes face much light, they may lose the ability and condition to see. More than an unassuming kind of aphorism (worth mentioning, the figure of speech remains quite valid), I corroborate this from a simple alert: never look at the sun with your naked optic. On the contrary, if immersed in the darkness: ´to be naked´ is synonymous with sky-clad, uncovered, bare, open, pure, neat, clean, sheer, fresh, frank, outstretched, undisguised, unvarnished. If immersed in the darkness: slowly, ritually our same eyes adapt and become sharper, attentive, and, who knows?, visionaries, clairvoyants. Thus Melgaço enables us to search for particular beauties, I can say (according to Mr. Tanizaki), so oriental. And since the hearing is possibly the most subtle of our senses, such transubstantial ´ceremony´ is elevated to maximum potency and delicacy;

´If indeed ´elegance is frigid´, it can as well be described as filthy. There is no denying, at any rate, that among the elements of the elegance in which we take such delight is a measure of the unclean, the unsanitary.´ (J.T.)

It´s vital, in the artistic field today, to unlink elegance from purity (or luminosity). Elegance is beauty that shows uncommon effectiveness and simplicity. It´s frequently used as a standard of tastefulness particularly in the areas of visual design, decoration, the sciences, and the aesthetics of mathematics. Elegant things exhibit refined grace and dignified propriety. Essential components of the concept include simplicity and consistency of design, focusing on the essential features of an object. In art of any kind one might also require dignified grace, or restrained beauty of style. Visual stimuli are frequently considered elegant if a small number of colors and stimuli are used, emphasizing the remainder. Melgaço teaches us that the brightest elegancy is in the shadows.

[Note, for example, that in engineering, a solution may be considered elegant if it uses a non-obvious method to produce a solution which is highly effective and simple. An elegant solution may solve multiple problems at once, especially problems not thought to be inter-related. In chemistry, chemists might look for elegance in theory and method, in technique and procedure. Elegance might comprise creative parsimony and versatility in the utilization of resources, in the manipulation of materials, and in effectiveness in syntheses and analysis. In pharmacy, elegance in formulation is important for quality as well as effectiveness in dosage form design, a major component of pharmaceutics.]

Its impurity, its insalubrity as measures of the pleasure it provides. Therefore, in Melgacian Dark Ambient, we tend to allow ourselves to be possessed and refined by elegance because there is no space (or time) for what is superfluous, excessive, expendable. Each of us embraces the oneness (in its gist) that finally enables us to exert grace and aplomb, thereby, we instrumentalize all its predicates;

´With lacquerware there is an extra beauty in that moment between removing the lid and lifting the bowl to the mouth, when one gazes at the still, silent liquid in the dark depths of the bowl, its colour hardly differing from that of the bowl itself. What lies within the darkness one cannot distinguish, but the palm senses the gentle movements of the liquid, vapour rises from within, forming droplets on the rim, and the fragrance carried upon the vapour brings a delicate anticipation ... a moment of mystery, it might almost be called, a moment of trance.´ (J.T.)

Non-distinction leads us to an alliance between all things around. It raises our affections that are invited to be more intrepid and deeper. Beyond that, the arcanum that inhabits the works of Melgaço is a form of invitation to the trance. To a more developed apprehension of sound universe as well as, metaphorically and empirically, a proposition so that our posture before the world and our existence in itself they can reap the enlightening spectra of the poetic shadows praise described above. In affix, I hint to you bring to the fore a fructiferous analogy betwixt all this and the dynamics O.M. proposes in his resonant nocturnal spawn: points & counterpoints in the midst of notes & noises; prolonged continual sequences & providential multidurational pauses; human voices & musical paraphernalia; densities & lightnesses; sharpnesses & blurs; dialectics & syntheses; light from within & dark from without & so on. A Japanese adage: ´People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.´ Not only people, art likewise. Another title, a little more extensive, of this stupendous breeding could therefore be: A Light from Within in a Dark Ambient.

´How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.´ (Carl Gustav Jung)

´Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence.´ (Rainer Maria Rilke)

´I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses´ (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Silently I propose, in such so rootedly substantial Dark Ambient, wrapped by the ´atmosfaerie´ fragrance of the roses, with the elegant cypresses tea: a toast, Ladies and Gentlemen.

乾杯!" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Dark ambient has its roots in the 1970s, with the introduction of newer, smaller, and more affordable effects units, synthesizer and sampling technology. Early genre elements can be found on Throbbing Gristle's 1978 album D.o.A: The Third and Final Report of Throbbing Gristle. Important early precursors of the genre were Tangerine Dream's early double-album Zeit (1972), which was unlike most of their subsequent albums in abandoning any notion of rhythm or definable melody in favour of ´darkly´ sinuous, occasionally disturbing sonics, and also Affenstunde (1970) by fellow krautrock band Popol Vuh. [When he wishes, O.M. expands this abandonment to the summit.]

Projects like Lustmord, Nocturnal Emissions, Zoviet France, and Lilith evolved out of industrial music during the 1980s, and were some of the earliest artists to create consistently dark ambient music. These artists make use of industrial principles such as noise and shock tactics, but wield these elements with more subtlety. Additionally, ambient industrial often has strong occultist tendencies, with a particular leaning toward magick, as expounded by Aleister Crowley, and chaos magic, often giving the music a ritualistic flavor. [The consistency of shading is relevant for O.M. although he has the habit of reaching the limits of ´murkiness´ and ´illumination´ with the same extrication. ´Noises and shock tactics´, whether subtly or thunderingly, contribute to the atmosphericities of his works stand out for their metamorphism. And no doubt, if anyone suspects an occult background, will find it. Not as a Melgacian target but for many times he cultivates an actually enigmatic content (that it will continue to be, in my understanding, a perennial secret) in the compositions (and in his biography).]

Generally the dark ambient music tends to evoke a feeling of loneliness, gloom, reclusiont, and insulation. [Yes, an introjective side (endowed with ´valleys of the umbra´) can be found in the work of O.M. but above all else, a subtile and intense learning (if we think of a human archetype, which is not infrequently born from painful and distressing processes) plus constructive liberation, elevation. Notwithstanding I believe that Melgaço chose to realize this internalization/incorporation not as the tormenting ontological crises that westernly end up being avatars of this ... yet, more Eastern, stressing an odyssey to/of self-knowledge.]

Ordinarily tends to evoke a feeling of insulation, reclusiont, gloom, and loneliness. However, while the theme in the music also tends to be ´dark´ in nature, some artists create more organic soundscapes. Examples of such productions are those of Oöphoi, Alio Die, Mathias Grassow, Tau Ceti, and Klaus Wiese. The Symphonies of the Planets series, a collection of works by Brain/Mind Research inspired by audible-frequency plasma waves recorded by the Voyager unmanned space probes, can also be considered an organic manifestation [both organic and sidereal components are found in the offspring of O.M. inasmuch as its Well is eloquent when it comes to synesthesia and synergies] of dark ambient.

(...)

In one way or another, spontaneously or forcibly carried away by life span: we grow accustomed to the Dark.

´We grow accustomed to the Dark -
When light is put away -
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step
For newness of the night -
Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -
And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darknesses -
Those Evenings of the Brain -
When not a Moon disclose a sign -
Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead -
But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight -
And Life steps almost straight.´

The poem of Emilly Elizabeth Dickinson describes perfectly the rite of passage that Mr. Melgaço, with the pardon of my paronomasia, gives to the light. The cover image of the album, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, fascinatingly too. [Discover and relish every detail; here recontextualized, O.M. adds to the original painting a symbolic range of an amazing impact - to the point of making it even more touching, entrancing, sweeping -.]

So I make my own the words of a third and decisive illustrious figure (Edgar Poe) while I am invaginated into the Dark Ambient of Otacílio: ´Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, (...), dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.´" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Among the artists who produce ambient industrial/dark ambient are Controlled Bleeding, CTI, Coph Nia, Deutsch Nepal, Hafler Trio, Lustmord, Nocturnal Emissions, PGR, Thomas Köner, Zoviet France, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK, Lab Report, Akira Yamaoka, Robin Rimbaud, Endura, Vidna Obmana, Daniel Menche, Lull, Hwyl Nofio, Hieronymus Bosch, and Final. Many of these artists are eclectic in their output, with much of it falling outside of ambient industrial;

II - Dark ambient has vibrated also into contemporary classical music. The example can be some solo works of composer Vladimír Hirsch, his project Aghiatrias or composer Jessie Martin;

III - "In Praise of Shadows" by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki:

pdf-objects.com/files/In-Praise-of-Shadows-Junichiro-Tanizaki.pdf

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.