Flat Recordings CD 01 08

Compact Disk 01 08 Nina/Paul/Paul/Nina

NINA/PAUL/PAUL/NINA
Recording (Tape 30)
July 7, 1994

This tape is a working tape of experiments for other works.
In the days leading up to Aural Hygiene, Brendon Bussy brought to the FLAT a CD of Steve Reich’s Early Work , which consisted of It’s gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966).
This made a great impression on Horsburgh, Barry and myself, and its influence was immediately evident in the experimental audio work that would soon follow. From here on, audio works/experiments would include not only recordings and collaged sound, but also composite overdubs, that were abstract, noisy, repetitive and/or ambient.
I was most interested in the way that Reich manipulated found sounds, and I attempted many lowtech experiments with similar techniques at this time. In It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out, Reich created a cyclical ‘wash’, which he described as a kind of “controlled chaos” by superimposing repeated samples. In many of his works, sampled words were looped until the pattern of interference rendered the meaning of the words unintelligible.
With Nina/Paul/Paul/Nina I returned to my explorations of the male/female relationship that I started with my work who Elmin at the Internotional. Again, the theme was communication, and the banalities of conventional social exchange.
The idea came to me in a brief second while introducing Samkelo (Paul) Matoti to Nina Saunders, a reporter who was collecting information on the FLAT. I thought about the phrase of short hand introduction - “Nina…Paul, Paul…Nina” and I repeated over and over initially as a joke. Later I thought about what it would be like to be caught in a perpetual introductory phase in a relationship; never getting any closer, mentally or physically. I kept the phrase in my head. Inspired by Reich and my own nightmarish imagined scenario, I decided to record it and to loop it over and over.
This initial experiment lead to a whole day of reworking old FLAT material, particularly my recordings of Elmin and resulted in work that I regarded as being far more psychologically charged than say the earlier Miracle Filter experiments, which tended to be more cerebral. These experiments recorded in successive takes became the basis of the next tape - Especially the fact that I don't have a car. (Tape 30A).