Abraham Chavelas: Desperatan Hambrientos los Gigantes
ARTIST: Abraham Chavelas.
WEB: Abraham Chavelas Soundcloud
WORK: The Giants Wake Up Hungry.
PLUS: No.
FORMAT: Digital.
LABEL: Archivo Veintidós.
RELEASE: March/2020.
COUNTRY: Chile/Worldwide.

As soon as the COVID-19 quarantine started, I had the pleasure of receiving a press mail announcing the release of a beautiful album. The sender was signed by Abraham Chavelas and indicated very briefly (too much briefly for me) the release of his work.

I know the signer of the email through social networks, I still do not remember who recommended me to follow it, but I am very grateful to him for doing so.

In a very brief exchange of mails, I receive the album and listen to it, I ask him some words, that with the virtual surmenage to which we are submitted, it was lost during a month, in the question: Did I send him or not the questions?

It took me a while to listen to his complete album, more than half are unconventional tracks in their length, they are long and with a lot of material to listen to, a kind of drone of bass and treble, very textured. Interesting ideas that flow endlessly in this work since its opening. But, it takes time to assimilate it, it already has a lot of information, and as it happens to us fat people, we don’t want to lose anything from the banquet.

Abraham Chavelas | RUIDO#04Abraham Chavelas | Ph: Rizhoma

When asked what the Giants will Wake up Hungry for, he says.

— It’s anguish, fears, misgivings, will, pain, mourning, absences, it’s a journey through the darkness, but with chiaroscuro, resplendent moments… There are memories, feelings that provoke tears and smiles. It is catharsis.

And this is how it feels as one advances in listening to this work, it sounds in part like mourning, a wet and cold winter’s evening waiting for a new dawn. There is a great deal of attention paid to panning and generating climates, yet it sounds more like an analog record than a digitally modeled one.

— About the creative process intellectually speaking, I work with emotions, feelings… I try to reinterpret that in sounds.
I work a lot with the voice, it’s my main tool. I record, then I distort, I decompose, I alter rhythm, frequencies, I put effects until it becomes a texture that does not look like voice. Many of my lack of talent in front of a device, a musical instrument, technology, or material, I solve them with my voice.I worked with some synths and digital applications (animoog, DRC, soundscapper, vosis) instruments played in a non-musical sense (theremin, oscillators, zither) and other devices that allowed me to generate sound (balloons, drums, etc.) and many of the tracks, its base are broken vinyls, turntables intervention, inspired by the work of Fluxus artists, from the Broken Music and other more recent ones like Maria Chavez, who is one of the artists I liked the most in the last years.Many things were left in the first take, others were part of longer, slower, more delicate processes: repeating over and over again until it was left.

And to put it all together I do some mixing in Ableton, I work a lot in SoundForge, and right there in SoundForge I do the mastering.

I was already working on it since late 2019, and in January I contacted the people at Archivo Veintidós, we talked, I sent them the material, they liked it, and here we are.

Emotions, Feelings, Sensations

— That’s what triggers my creative process, what I feel I transform into a sound, for example “How would my anguish over insomnia sound”, because there’s Hypnagogia, track 6 on the album.

This is a material made after a love break-up, from the deafening absence. Of not sleeping, of not thinking more than the same thing in a loop, it is the pain of fragmented, broken memories. Of the voices that are no longer heard.

The title of the album is part of a text with poetic pretensions that I wrote a couple of years ago and with which I have also been working sonorously on other projects.

Except for Omen-Presagio, which is a piece made a long time in advance and was not contemplated for the album, everything else was thinking about this journey of shadows… But I considered that it was necessary to have a light of hope and in that sense the last track, Omen-Presagio, is the most resplendent piece I have so far, and I thought it was pertinent to include it as the end of this sonic journey.

Abraham ChavelasAbraham Chavelas | Ph: Bernard Betancourt

Soundscape

— The soundscape is memory, it is the capture of the ephemeral, of the instants… Instants that do not return, even if they seem permanent, are never the same. Like the sound of the waves and the birds that I include in this album. Track 7, Interludio II, seems to me to be something beautiful that breaks with the whole aesthetics of the album, but it’s still not out of place.
To find a balance between the subtle and what you want to say with the soundscape, to become the voice of the absent singer, to give you a narrative, “what is he telling me?”, for that it is important that the title of the piece is reflected in what we listen to.The soundscapes are my moments of respite on this album.

New Processes

— Although I’m satisfied with the result, I was left with a hunger for more. To continue exploring with new materials, to leave others aside, for a moment; to take up again other practices that I had forgotten. It has been very gratifying to receive the comments of other sound artists or people close to this practice who have been thrilled with the result, but even more so to receive very loving comments from people who have never had an approach to sound art or experimental music and have been provoked by this whole trip. That’s what fills me the most… To know that I’m on the right track, both for myself as a creator, and for those who do me the favor of appreciating and criticizing my work.

For some time now we have been commenting in this space on working with emotions, both creating and sitting down to listen. That for many can be linked to a pleasant job, for others it is a quite serious job.

Listening with the senses, with everyone and not only with the ear, together with all the derivations that we can offer on the subject.

Chavelas composes a work worthy of attentive listening, a deep sound spectacle that emerges from her entrails betting to share what he feels, not only with those of us who could be grouped in the label of professional LISTENER, also opens the game and does so with those less dedicated to the craft of listening, it is noted, it is heard and is a good corollary to this dawn.

If you like, you can listen to the podcast with the review at the following link www.ruido04.