Music-making and dysfunctional technology
As part of a series about music technology called “Noise Makers,” we’re talking to musicians about their favorite noise-making device. For this week’s installment we talked with experimental composer Sabisha Friedberg ahead of her performance for the Issue Project Room.
Sabisha Friedberg’s music is planned very carefully. As she puts it, “if something is very well placed and thought out a kind of magic can happen.”
Magic and unexpected occurrences are the focal point of her recent double-LP entitled The Haunt Variance. About the record, Friedberg says, “much of it is about things that seem to manifest as apparitions that one doesn’t intend. It’s the idea of a haunted space and entities that end up coming through the mechanics in the electronic equipment like phantoms that you don’t expect.”
Click the media player above to hear Sabisha Friedberg talk about working with imperfect technology to make music.
She remembers how this electronic equipment, specifically tape machines and frequency generators, “were my early toys, in fact. So, I played with disused reel-to-reel tape machines and the frequency generators I’ve inherited from people.”
In her performances, Friedberg continues to revive instruments, and even sources her equipment from a Russian mechanic in Coney Island. Through her dysfunctional equipment and rigorous planning, Friedberg creates music with a controlled chaos and haunting ambiance.
More information on Sabisha Friedberg and her recent double-LP can be found at the Issue Project Room website.
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