This is the second Staalplaat Soundsystem LP made for Yokomono. On one side of this record the Staalplaat
Soundsystem has made 55 loops of digital silence. The deterioration and damaging will generate the sound. Vinyl live so to say. For the other side we have invited 11 other artists to make each 5 loops: Anton Nikkilä, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Charlemagne Palestine, Christian Fennesz, fm3, Ignaz Schick, Ilpo Vaisanen, Justin Bennett, Phill Niblock, Radian and Tim Hecker.
Yokomono is the Staalplaat Mono Erosive Surround Sound Installation.
The present setup consists of 10 vinyl killers -
toy car record players, each customised with its
own fm transmitter. The sound will come through a
set of radios that receives the signal
transmitted by the vinyl killers You might think
Yokomono is just a DJ set with 10 turntables, and
in a way that is correct but in many more ways
Yokomono is completely different. First of all;
each killer is mono and has poor sound quality,
but much more Yokomono is very hard to handle,
you can not really select a track or make it stop
when you want to, its more putting the needle
down blindfolded. The real difference starts when
you realise each killer runs on batteries,
meaning the speed is unstable and it will slow
down during the concert, the fact that the
batteries run out will not only effect the speed
but it will effect the fm frequency that the
killer is transmitting too, making Yokomono
unstable on different levels. The fact that we
transmit with 10 fm transmitters at the same time
means that each transmitter is effecting the
other. These interferences and the unstable media
that are transmitting makes the whole set
unpredictable and hard to control, making
Yokomono unique and adventures.
Yokomono exists
in two main versions:
For the installation: we bring over two hundred
radios. As each killer will play its own record
(locked groove records made by us for the
installation) it opens up a separate audio
stream. We thereby generate and control a
10-channel sound system. By arranging the radios
in 10 groups it becomes possible to explore the
architectural dimensions of the space. Some
radios are tuned to the same frequency, here we
use small battery operated radios on sets of the
train models to map the transmission in the
space, for it will drive in and out the
interfering frequencies.
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