Ondřej Gášek: Master_Castle_Man_Machine
The main subject of the audio painting Master_Castle_Man_Machine is the “struggle for one’s home.” In it, the author comes to terms with the situation in his family: his father’s violent behavior and attempts at robbing him and his mother of their home. The introduction opens with a poem that symbolically portrays these events. The second part is an audio representation of his mother’s garden, which is mentioned at the poem’s end. The second half of the composition is a rising audio fragment of the destructive force that the father hurls at the family. The composition concludes with a minimalist guitar motif that ends in silence, since the author has yet to find a way out of this situation.
Compositionally, this piece follows loosely on the author’s previous works, again using the rhythmically thunderous sound of metal. He also uses a grand piano as a percussion instrument – playing on its body, sounding board, mechanism and pedals. He also returns to working with the harmonium, which he likes to use as a bass instrument.
The entire composition is based on improvisation, which the author views as a tool for achieving a highly authentic representation of the human emotional processes. He believes that if an original emotional stimulus is subjected to any form of rationalism, it loses its face or essence – or, if you like, its charge. For this reason, the author works entirely through intuition, letting himself be drawn along by a whirlpool of circumstance and the situation around and within him. He is convinced that this approach allows him to create an accurate and truthful audio painting of reality and of the current state of his soul that will have an honest and intense impact on the listener. In this way, the paintings pull the listener into a world that is both abstract and real. All sounds were recorded in the small town of Bojov, whose name sounds like a combination of the words “boj” (struggle) and “domov” (home) – the ideal place for composing this work.
Instruments: piano, harmonium, acoustic guitar, tub, telephone, fire, water, wind, stones, metal stairway, white noise machine, Reaktor.
Voices: Jaroslava Zapalačová, dogs, birds.
Poem written by: Jaroslava Zapalačová