U71 | juan josé calarco | poleas
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format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies/Digital
Regular edition of 170 copies packaged in clear vinyl sleeve with folded insert + an additional art card both on 350gr satin paper
Special edition of 30 copies packaged in black mass-tinted cardboard digisleeve with frame.
it holds a set of 2 double-sided art cards with a different artwork from the regular edition on 350gr satin paper.
+ a set of 3 square photos on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Paper Supreme.
more details/possible modifications TBA
release year : 2021
length : 46’34
tracks :
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status : still available !
>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net
Regular edition
(Belgium) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 15 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 16 € (inc.postage)
Special ultra ltd edition only 7 copies left !
(Belgium) : 17 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 18 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 19 € (inc.postage)
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: info :
This work deals with an area that I have travelled daily for the last years. A continuum between a train and subway terminals linked and a third train station, located fifteen blocks away with which they connect through a semi-empty landscape of workshops, barracks and the remains of an old station, in the middle of the city. The main train station functions primarily as a commuter rail station with several hallways leading to other trains and subways, so I started my tasks from there, by auscultating the elevators, tubes, air conditioning, ventilation, motors, ducts, signal systems and all that can be barely noticed once the railcars leaves, and it’s late enough to avoid the people buzzing. Focusing also on the sounds from the different corridors and a few underground stores down there in the subway central, like a very small bar, a grocery shop, some Western Union location and a couple more of shops with a few vending machines. These galleries have always seemed to me like models of a grey-toned micro city where the fluorescent tubes set the pace. Upstairs, there’s a big entrance and mechanical stairways and also the way to the back of the station that leads to the a myriad of railways lines (like seven active and many abandoned), fences, ancient wagons both well conserved or eaten by rust and musk, modern buildings filled with cameras and apparently excessive security and more railways and old metal bridges to cross upon, hopefully all captured somehow in these recordings.
(juan josé calarco, 04 July 2021)
: reviews :
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Poleas: a secret sound universe uncovered behind the most crowded transit railway line in the world
Unlike most people (including me) who commute daily to work by train and spend the time catching up on much-needed shut-eye or gazing at their mobile phones, rarely taking much notice of the noise made by trains or the railway tracks at particular train stations and certainly too busy to pay attention to the ambient sounds of railway stations as they pass through the turnstiles and hurry to their destinations, Argentine experimental musician Juan José Calarco was intrigued enough by the sonic environment of three adjacent railway stations along the Urquiza suburban railway line in suburban Buenos Aires to capture these stations’ sounds, including the sounds of the elevators, the fluorescent tubes, the ventilation systems and signal systems. Even the sounds of the shops and the vending machines in the railway stations are fodder for recordings. Calarco also ventured into the back of the main train station along the line, leading to connections with other railway lines (many of which have been abandoned), to record the noises of railway carriages no longer in use. The sounds of the environments in these other railway lines with their carriages, both preserved and abandoned, also were caught in Calarco’s recordings.
The recordings were then used to create the three compositions that you hear on “Poleas” so strictly speaking this CD is not an audio document capturing at specific points in time the sonic ambient environments of the Urquiza rail link. The tracks draw a general picture of a world largely invisible to humans yet existing in parallel with us, perhaps too preoccupied with our own thoughts and concerns to notice our fellow travellers in an alternative universe. That may have been the concept behind Calarco’s work and the reason humans and their noises are absent from this recording despite a survey done by Google Maps in 2019 which showed that the Urquiza line in Buenos Aires was the most crowded transit line in the world!
I find the compositions quite restful and reassuring: very little happens abruptly and even quick and sudden transitions from one set of noises to another are very smooth. Rhythms may be cold and machine-like but they’re also predictable during the time they last. The rise and fall in the volume of these rhythms may or may not be deliberate on Calarco’s part to initiate or suggest a change in mood. In the second short track, strange little robot conversations catch my attention: they could be aliens observing us behind a shield or veil, scratching their noggins at our peculiar and bizarre behaviours and actions. The other two tracks bookending this bridge piece are very long but due to the way the various noises pass smoothly and serenely from one to the other continuously, they both form very definite and coherent if serpentine narrative journeys.
Contrary to what Frans de Waard says in his review at Vital Weekly, I didn’t think this CD was cold and dystopian – I found it a really very pleasant work to spend 50 minutes of my time with. My brain is now obsessed with visions of little aliens in their invisible control room observing this strange fellow walking about and making recordings, babbling to themselves about what he could be possibly doing, and fearing he might have noticed them somehow!
Nausika/Jennifer Hor
The Sound Projector
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All of Belgium’s Unfathomless label releases deal with field recordings and many of these with elements from nature. This one is different. Argentina’s Juan José Calarco recorded “corridors, nooks, bridges, tunnels, walls and surroundings of three adjacent stations of the Urquiza railway network, Buenos Aires, Argentina”. It is an area which Calarco has travelled to daily for the last few years, and it contains subway terminals, elevators, motors, ducts and much more. As a man fascinated by a sound, he started taping sounds from these places and use these in the three pieces on ‘Poleas‘. Two are around nineteen minutes, and in the middle, there is an eight-minute bridge. Maybe these three tracks reflect the three stations. Whatever he did, Calarco managed to avoid recording human beings. I have no idea how Calarco uses treatments to these recordings and if they are treated; my best guess is ‘quite a bit’. Calarco goes deep into changing frequency ranges, looping fragments of sound and layering various sound events. This music is not a collage of field recordings that depict the place but three compositions that use sounds from a specified location. That is quite a difference. Calarco‘s painting of the site is a greyish one, a cold and distant place. Electricity is busy, repetition of from vending machines, stairs, and so. Without the action of humans, a lonely world. Don’t get me wrong; I love this dystopian soundtrack quite a lot. A bleak world, almost out of a science fiction film, with minimal activity; not a movie about aliens, but life disappearing, yet everything else works. Wasn’t that what the neutron bomb scare was in the 80s? If so, then this is one possible soundtrack and an excellent one at that. And, disclaimer! I might be all wrong with my interpretation of the music.
Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly
Unfathomless 