D r o n o l o g y

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 01:10:31] 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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"Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist musical genre 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´.

Music which contains drones - and is rhythmically still or very slow - can be found in many parts of the world, including bagpipe traditions, among them Scottish pibroch piping; didgeridoo music in Australia, South Indian classical Carnatic music and Hindustani classical music (both of which are accompanied almost invariably by the tambura, a plucked, four-string instrument which is only capable of playing a drone); the sustained tones found in the Japanese gagaku classical tradition; possibly (disputed) in pre-polyphonic organum vocal music of late medieval Europe; and the Byzantine chant's ison (or drone-singing, attested after the fifteenth century). Repetition of tones, supposed to be in imitation of bagpipes, is found in a wide variety of forms. The modern genre also called drone music (called ´dronology´ by some books, labels and stores, to differentiate it from ethnic drone-based music) is often applied to artists who have allied themselves closely with underground parameters and post-rock and experimental modalities as well as fit into dark ambient (customarily associated with the tentacles of the Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist too), minimalist and noise music.

Always Otacílio Melgaço explored with resourcefulness this singular creating dialect and now, in direct purpose, we´re before a new record devoted entirely to. Still reverberating retrospective views of the own legacy, he utilizes random procedures to develop its distinctive contribution to the genre. In particular statement, O.M. said that flirted with John Cage and the relationship with aleatoric perspectives (here, in a superposition of extensive independent sonic layers) to find and expand the nexus that culminated, accordingly, in Melgacian ´Dronology´. Such intersection is only one of several constructive ´eccentricities´ of Otacílio.

I quote another: as you must know every day more, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a d-r-o-n-e, as an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), or by several other names, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by a human operator, or fully or intermittently autonomously, by onboard computers. It´s exactly adopting the fuss produced by one of these vehicles Mr. Melgaço concludes the third part of his enigmatic Piece. Not only the noisy effect, but the metaphor-in-question speaks for itself.

Here, there and everywhere. Present, past and future. Echoes of a triadic dimension over the subtle unhurried kaleidoscope audible. References that go beyond borders (geographic, chronological, historical, cultural) - bearers of a metaphysical nature, assuredly. However it's more than that. Martin Heidegger uttered: ´Being and time determine each other reciprocally, but in such a manner that neither can the former - Being - be addressed as something temporal nor can the latter - time - be addressed as a being.´ It´s a possible definition for the work that you will now absorb. Four-dimensionally." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"A flawless translation of what can be conceived as m-a-n-t-r-a by the contemporaneity." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Some artists who are related to Drone music:

Theater of Eternal Music (ou The Dream Syndicate: La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Angus MacLise, John Cale, et al.)
Charlemagne Palestine
Eliane Radigue
Kraftwerk
Klaus Schulze
Tangerine Dream
Sonic Youth
The Velvet Underground
Robert Fripp e Brian Eno
Robert Rich
Steve Roach
Stars of the Lid
Earth
Coil
Sonic Boom
Phill Niblock
Sheila Chandra
Sunn O)))
Cocteau Twins;

II - The Sanskrit word mantra- (m.; also n. mantram) consists of the root man- "to think" (also in manas "mind") and the suffix -tra, designating tools or instruments, hence a literal translation would be "instrument of thought".

...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.