I. C. O. M.

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o
&
I n e C l a e s

[duration 52:25​​​] all rights reserved

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L O G B O O K by Caio Campbell
(Anglo-Brazilian semiotician and musician)

<< Since his appreciation of some of her performances on European soil, it all started when Otacílio
Melgaço and Ine Claes met virtually. Under the wings and claws of remote technology that is capable
of intertwining multi and transdisciplinary artists with more acuity, as is the case of both. He, a
Brazilian composer, arranger, poly-instrumentalist (as well as a playwright, visual artist, etc.), brought
new airs of auspicious aperture to possible collaborations. She, Belgian vocal artist, composer,
choreographer and performer, embraced the projection of this breathable flow and reciprocated the
positive signal. Still under the aura of those beginnings, for Melgaço, in that timeframe, much more
than a participation in one of his countless albums, the relationship with Claes would become a
partnership and with all the enchantment and isonomy of the alliances that beckon through the most
promising movements: viscerally complicit and metaphysically expandable. Having decided on the
transoceanic phonocultural pact, it was time to draw up a cartography. Under which sidereal design
would both be oriented? Otacílio suggested a kind of (game of) chess. Based on maximum
conciseness, this would happen in just two moves. As in a clash between a couple of samurais, it
takes years and years (or centuries) of practice so that, in a pair of blows, everything is consecrated.
The difference, still exploring such metaphor, is that Melgaço and Claes would be triumphant at the
same time, and the rite won will be one of Life, of more blossoming Life. He would create an initial
compositional Piece that would be presented to her and thus there would be another layer adhered,
reaching the finished completion of the making. Then the opposite. She would take the first step, he
would respond like a contradance and so on. Another minutiae that was part of the agreement:
Melgaço would take on all the instrumental features and Claes the vocals (& lyrics). In some Pieces,
she also worked with field recordings and objects. He, in turn, included a certain voice in CognitiveRestructuring and in the bonus
track too, as an unexpected intervention. Apart from that, everything was allowed, now there were other
claws and wings: ... of creation; they were already in the womb of the engendering genesis. It was a
few months that separated the process of this serpent until it bit its own tail. Some curiosities that
could not be missing from a / this Logbook, for example: in the meantime, the Belgian artist became
pregnant and such magical temporality walked side by side with what would become I.C.O.M.,
the name with which the present album - that both bring in the light - was baptized. [The Opus Fœtus
was Otacílio's homage to this special passage in Claes' life.] Still on baptisms, I.C.O.M.
has a very direct inspiration from the Brazilian musician. His suggestion is, in fact,
the initial letters of their names. And, could not fail to be mentioned, there is a reference to the word
'ICON'. We could resort here to an encyclopetic intervention, and open a curious parenthesis. An Icon
[from Ancient Greek εἰκών (eikṓn) 'image, resemblance'] is a religious work of art, most commonly a
painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic churches. They are
not simply artworks; 'an Icon is a sacred image used in religious devotion’. The most common
subjects include Christ, Mary, saints and angels. Although especially associated with portrait-style
images concentrating on one or two main figures, the term also covers most of the religious images in
a variety of artistic media produced by Eastern Christianity, including narrative scenes, usually from
the Bible or the lives of saints. Icons are most commonly painted on wood panels with egg tempera,
but they may also be cast in metal or carved in stone or embroidered on cloth or done in mosaic or
fresco work or printed on paper or metal, etc. Comparable images from Western Christianity may be
classified as ́Icons ́, although ́iconic ́ may also be used to describe the static style of a devotional
image. In the Greek language, the term for Icon painting uses the same word as for 'writing', and
Orthodox sources often translate it into English as Icon writing. (...) Is there a truly religious approach
on the part of Otacílio and Ine if we look for an exegesis of the sound Work? No, conventionally, no.
But if the term 'religion' can find its origin in 'religare' [re (meaning 'again') + ligare ('bind' or ́connect ́)],
there will be the conviction that this is one of the most quintessential attributes that I.C.O.M. it has.
In the broadest and most imaginable senses. According to statements by Melgaço himself, there is
also a certain irony if a musical Offspring - here, conjuncturally -, it receives as a title that refers us to
the vision. Thinking that we currently live in a kind of ocular dictatorship. In this context, it is possible
to address extrapolating readings such as, expressly cited by Otacílio himself, Acheiropoieta and
Iconoclasm. That said, in addition to the synonyms image / likeness / figure / statue / model, there is, finally, the idea of Idol,
a person or thing regarded as
a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration. As well as appearing in Linguistics (a sign whose
form directly reflects the thing it means, for example, the word snarl pronounced in a snarling way)
and even in Computing (a symbol or graphic representation on a screen of a program, option, or
window, especially one of several for selection). Joining the dots and mirroring the terms, for Idol,
Otacílio responds exactly with Iconoclasm. For what could become a self-centered self-representation
of the two sonic creators (although the work is a portrait of both), Acheiropoieta proposes a more
ethereal, multi subjectivist, transcendent dimension. And if we reap in Linguistics the so genuine and
authentic aspect that connects composers-and-compositions, in Computing there is the insinuation of
the selection process and, from that, of distinctive adoption. Representation of the odyssey that is an
artistic fertilization that takes place in amplitude and immeasurability until it gains heads, trunks and
limbs. Of the creatures already embodied and with an indication of who was the initiator in the order
of authorship, they are:

mCqUEEN (Otacílio Melgaço & Ine Claes)

The Exchange of Green Grass (Ine Claes & Otacílio Melgaço)

Fœtus (Otacílio Melgaço & Ine Claes)

CognitiveRestructuring (Ine Claes & Otacílio Melgaço)

Hundert Wasser (Otacílio Melgaço & Ine Claes)

and, as a bonus track,

The Return [Senti Saudades] (Otacílio Melgaço - with recitation by Ine Claes from a fragment of a poem by Marie Van Langendonck -).

An observation about the composition that closes the album, as a historical addendum. Marie Barbe
Antoinette Rutgeerts Van Langendonck (Antwerp, 7 October 1798 – Gravataí, 6 June 1875) was a
Belgian poet and writer. She published two books of poetry: Aubepines, published in 1841, and
Heures poétiques, published in 1846. When Marie became a widow, in 1857, she decided to
renounce the comfortable life in her native country and emigrated to Brazil, where her two children
had come to work as colonists. In fact, the children were part of a colonization project, the Harmonia
colony, on the banks of the Jacuí river, proposed by the Belgian count of Montravel, a project that
Later would have failed. Madame Van Langendonck wrote a diary describing her experiences in
Brazilian lands, during the period in which she lived in Rio Grande do Sul, between 1857 and 1859. Her
narrative was very lively and colorful, full of intelligent observations about the country, the colonies,
emigrants and the Brazilian government. After two years, she returned to Europe. Missing it, three
years later she was reunited with her children, who had already settled in the Harmonia colony. Such
́saudade ́ (longing / missing) is expressed in the poem entitled
O Retorno (1863). Melgaço chose a
fragment of this poem for the ending of I.C.O.M. based on the original Portuguese version. Otacílio
translated it into English and presented it to Ine. Claes, in turn, took the words to French and Dutch,
Belgian languages. Both are heard in the definitive version (by Melgaço, perceptibly divided into channels).
The initial idea of Otacílio was based on a
balanced mention of Brazil and Belgium, since it is the poetry of an author from that European country
to be read / recited in the official idioms and / but that made direct reference to Brazilian lands (O.M. kept two words in his mother tongue, by the way: ́Senti Saudades ́, which became the subtitle of the
sound Piece).

́Brasil, te revejo após três anos de ausência / Brazil, I see you again after three years of absence
No entanto te deixei para não mais voltar, / However I left you never to return,
Mas a força de tua atração eu ignorava, / But the force of your attraction I ignored,
Pensei apenas uma lembrança de ti levar. / I thought only a memory of you to take.
Mas debaixo deste outro céu, o céu de minha pátria, / But under this other sky, the sky of my homeland,
Tive frio: de teu horizonte de fogo senti saudades / I was cold: I missed your fiery horizon senti saudades
Da majestosa floresta a que nunca se esquece / From the majestic forest to which you never forget
Quando ali se viveu somente sob o olhar de Deus. / When there we lived only under the eyes of God.
Salve, ó nova pátria de meus filhos, / Hail, O new homeland of my children,
Salve. Eu venho recuperar à sombra de tuas florestas / Hail. I come to recover in the shadow of your forests
Este lugar ignorado onde minha vida vai acabar / This overlooked place where my life will end
Aonde eu irei, pela última vez, abençoá-los. / Where I will go, for the last time, to bless you. ́
— O Retorno (The Return)

Still on the engendering ́methodology ́, it is important to point out that there was no hierarchy drawn
from who initiated the sonic Spawn. The importance of what was proposed at the beginning is the same
as the one that added a second layer. For the two strata form a third, which is the composition itself and
thus: a unitary sound Work. The difference is that, therefore, whoever started it brought the conception
to light. Once this record is made, it is inoubliable to draw attention to the sophistication of the
photograph - by Ine Claes - that is stamped on the cover of the album. A coexistence of (imagetic)
perspectives that stands out as a valuable analogy to the sound content itself. And here I emphasize the
similar parallel between the two nations of origin of the respective artists, represented in the scenic
views (one by Claes, the other by Melgaço) inside the present booklet
[[Note: available through the purchase of this phonograph record]],
maintaining the cognate liaison
that we witnessed in the aforementioned The Return [Senti Saudades].
(...) Having unveiled all these
structural perceptions, we would reach the summit of drawing considerations about every reverberating
Piece contained in I.C.O.M., as usual. Echoing the ́doctrine ́ of the iconoclasts that is present there /
here too, I always found it unsound (the pun is pertinent) that someone tries to transplant into the field of
words what is enlivened in terms of...sound. ́Writing about music ́ (in the sense of wanting to describe it
or proposing some kind of X-ray) would be, in addition to being vexingly redundant, chimerically the
same as ́dancing about architecture ́, here's the already established cliché. If there is then an ad rem
suggestion to be made, culminatingly, it is: listen to I.C.O.M. with all your elevated openness to
immersions. Melgaço and its atmospheric-conceptual poly amplitude in extraordinary approaches
emanating from mesmerizing instrumentations, Claes and its terrific upward vocal involvement under
the epidermis of fascinatingly metamorphic words; this surprising Duo, without any shadow of a doubt,
lives up, in depth and ascension, to Charles Mingus' maxim: ́My music is evidence of my soul's will to
live ́. Alpha and Omega, their music is the most corporificated evidence of the will to live in each of our
souls. >>

&

- A r t i s t T e s t i m o n i a l s -

Ine Claes: << It is exiting to begin a collaboration with someone on the other side of the planet you
don't know and have never seen. Throughout the process we shared what was going on in our
homeland, what was happening in our personal lives, what was living in our hearts. These stories
and anekdotes became the nourishment, the inspiration for this album. A dialogue with a stranger. An
artistic evolution purely based on hearing, listening and reflecting. Exchanging, responding to each
other through sound, creating a language that became our language. A language that grew over time
and transcended habitual communication of words and shared thoughts. To meet another artist in this
context and create a connection in which such pure communication exists is rare. I.C.O.M. is a work I
carry in my heart, I share with Otacílio in an endless journey where our joined work will keep living
and evolving in the listener’s ear and soul. >>

Otacílio Melgaço: << I like how the English language handles the word ́alien ́. Between displaced
nouns and exciting adjectives, it can be both ́foreign ́ and ́belonging to other worlds ́, ́extraterrestrial ́.
From this, the derivations would be countless: from ́outsider ́ to ́outlander ́, from ́noncitizen ́ to
́expatriate ́, from ́trespasser ́ to ́conqueror ́ ... until hell freezes over. ´Barbarians always think of
themselves as the bringers of civilization ́, as I hear from Pierre Schaeffer. Maybe that's why I
essentially prefer the barbarians and not the civilized ones. Living, alongside Ine Claes, the saga that
is this sonic œuvre, has become an adventure worthy of Marco Polo. Of Kublai Khan, as far as. Such
an unexpected, unpredictable artistic alliance flirting with hazard in the ideal measure, never
abolishing chance, always abolishing the abolition; un coup de dés plus coup d'état. In intriguing
simultaneity, the compositions that reveal themselves in I.C.O.M. were reflections of the perpetuum
mobile of our existences throughout the respective crossings however I feel that they belong to a
scintilla that escape from any timespace. A fine balance point has been established through such
partnership that can be multifacetedly metabolizable. If my trans-spatial instrumental performances
are considered, by some, otherworldly, behold, Mrs. Claes' voice, with a shamanistic modernity,
brings the soles of our feet closer to the ground without losing their levitating gift. If the spellbinding
words sung or pronounced by her present us with a syntactic axis open to palpable cognitions, the
meta-acoustic elements that give pulp to my climactic apparitions, rhizomatize arrangements that
fertilize what is linguistically untranslatable, unnamable. I
quote these two Sixth Senses, they could be bazillions of. It's these ´wormholes ́, in physics: a
hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in - here, inescapable - spacetime, which give the
album this phantasmal concreteness; I proudly conclude.
Tractatus (I)logico-Phonosophicus, I.C.O.M. is the Otherness.
It is the Chronicle of a Metamorphosis.
Stars and Topsoil.
Sunburst and Snowblind.
T w i n l i g h t s . . . . >>

#

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)

@

The Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist answers
some curiosities manifested by admirers through his official social networks. Of all submissions, 9 were specially chosen to be posted here.

<<I.C.O.M. is it a conceptual work?>>
Ângela Oliveira

<<That remains open, without preconcept ... Do compositions exist individually? Undoubtedly. The Opuses embody an Odyssey with a beginning, middle and end (maybe not in that order) and a new beginning &...? Who could claim otherwise? I could here and now trace countless itineraries that would embrace this timeless almost one hour duration of I.C.O.M. and all would resemble, in total diversity, the prosodies of the Thousand and One Nights. Ine and I, we are like the (reanatomized) two mouths of Scheherazade or Čehrāzād or Shirazad or Šīrāzād or Shahrazad or Šahrāzād or شهرزاد there. After all the floods, the Grail overfloweth as a mode of survival.>>
O.M.

<<Many of your ´discs´ are instrumental. What were your criteria for stipulating the presence of the Melgacian apparatus when recording an entire album with a partner who is on vocals?>>
Orest Myroshnychenko

<<I tried to be as delicate as possible. I shouldn't put myself in a resounding way because the potency of so many strands of instruments would end up burying the vocal threads alive. I also had no interest in leveling both manifestations equally in volumes and palettes as that would be a boring homogeneity for me. So it was in my north to be as subtle as possible. In some passages, I was a landscaper. In others, an astrolabe. Plus, a fencer, a platypus, a Mauritia flexuosa, a stethoscope, a deep-sea diver. Opening fields, realms, spheres for the voice to be able to transcommunicate; sometimes going to a more distant spatiality, playing with these dimensions that are interchangeable due to our expectancies, eccentricities, unconformities. This to me is the sign of a new form of harmonisation, indeed. I assumed myself as a sonic acupuncturist there, that's how I felt.>>
O.M.

<<In a Silent Way. You seem like a solitary artist if I observe everything that is a stereotype of contemporary times. I'm talking about common sense and everything that is, by nature, uncOMmon. I.C.O.M. is there a way to give it more voice? I'd like to hear something about that.>>
Celia Reboul

<<'The lone man should find his symphony within himself, not only in conceiving the music in abstract, but in being his own instrument. A lone man possesses considerably more than the twelve notes of the pitched voice. He cries, he whistles, he walks, he thumps his fist, he laughs, he groans. His heart beats, his breathing accelerates, he utters words, launches calls and other calls reply to him. Nothing echoes more a solitary cry than the clamor of crowds.´ Pierre Schaeffer's words. I also confess that in I.C.O.M. there are echoes of cries and clamors, from the solitudes and crowds that inhabit us. In the meanders of this quite inclusive sound experience, I can hear you, Celia, more and more! And so, our voices, madame Reboul, in unison.>>
O.M.

<<In the compositions you started, it seems to me that there are special tributes to certain people. Correct me if I'm wrong but it would be Alexander McQueen, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Marie Van Langendonck and, at that moment, still inside her belly, the son of the artist you share I.C.O.M. with, yes? Could you talk a little bit about that?>>
Janel Róża

<<In I.C.O.M., a deep dialogue with Ine is revealed. A dual character that rose in frank oneness. My idea of forming a triad (in respectivities), in addition to addressing the configuration of possible triptychs in pulps & unexpected contextualizations & biothematic-aesthetic expansions, was focused on the invitation to a third bank of the river. On and off, I like this major ballet-of-the-enchanted-ones in the amphitheater.>>
O.M.

<<Usually, the use of keys, strings, metals, woods... in your creations is impeccable. I also find incredible the effects of everything that is not a traditional musical instrument and that is a current part of your vast sound vocabulary. What drives you when deciding which noise interventions to adopt?>>
Violet Dubois

<<The fluid mesmerization of intuitions, the fierce minutiae of sonic predestinations, ... the friendly prowling of that featherless dog ... that takes me for a walk.>>
O.M.

<<Through art, and I.C.O.M. it's a great work of art, do you believe it's feasible to bring to the audience some form of ´truth´?>>
Sofia Greco

<<I will try to translate here what one of my most admirable countrymen [linked to the world of letters] once said and therein lies my rejoinder: The truth, perhaps, is the chill / shiver with which we contemplate the gravity, the immortal gravity of everything around us: the silence, the calm, the deep and miraculous music that flows in the essence of everything that exists, and that makes the purest shadow, in the most inconsequential way, an attentive and understanding entity before the amazing / astonishing miracle of living.>>
O.M.

<<I dove into I.C.O.M. and I was visited by impressions that who you are there. Looking at the entire Melgacian career, omnipresently, who are you?>>
Orazio Lombardi

<<Who Are You. [(The) Who by Numbers? (The) Who Sell Out?] Who's Next ... Gustav Klimt used to mention that those who wanted to know who he was should look for him in its ArtWorks. There, who Gustav is and what Klimt want ... will be revealed. I can whisper-shout the same, and more: what I dream; what, so I hope, in flesh and tritone, I sonically transfigure & transubstantiate.>>
O.M.

<<What was it like to bring your country so concretely to this duo creation? Ending the album by speaking in such a touching way about Brazil, under the sky of your land.>>
Akira Koyama

<<Chronicle of the Murdered House.
Rhizome of the Resurrected Home.>>
O.M.

<<Is there still something to be said on the meanings of the term with which you named this mind-blowing oeuvre?>>
Solveig Öberg

<<As an addendum to everything that has already been written about... I do, apace and as a succulent preamble, an allusion - en passant - to ´Comme´ (in French and as an adverb), which can mean 'Marque l'Intensité'. Already in English, it is admissible to imagine what not by the exact spelling but by phonetically would be similar.
´I.C.O.M.´ | 'I COME': ´move or travel toward or into a place thought of as close or familiar to the speaker´; ´occur; happen; take place´; ´take or occupy a distinct position in space, order, or priority´; ´pass into a particular state´; ´when a specified time is reached or event happens´; and even ´have an orgasm´.
Let each one choose.
If catapulted from my orgiastic omen, preferably all.>>
O.M.