Kimm, O’Hara

Ice Machine

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Radio ›› Ice Machine
1 mars 2011
Par Kaie Kellough in Canadian Review of Literature in Performance #1 (Québec), 1 mars 2011

Texte

«Mankind plays with genre and expectation, mechanizing the meditative chant, challenging the trite pop tune, and going yet further: Mankind remains unruly, creating itself according to its own impulses.»

Ice Machine is the debut CD by Montréal duo Mankind, made up of word-sound digitizer Alexis O’Hara, and poet at large D. Kimm. The CD is short — its overall running time is 40:39, yet within that brevity it sprawls. Ice Machine blends electronic effects, a range of vocal expressions, riffs on the fairy-tale, the nursery rhyme, and the mafia film score. It incorporates storytelling, sound poetry, and sound-collage. It moves from seemingly improvised pieces to compact song-like works to longer, text-based explorations. The album includes bilingual tracks (English/French) and unilingual ones (English, French, Spanish), and as a result, has no dominant language.

The first piece on Ice Machine, Mile End Throat Singers recalls the rhythmic throat singing of Tanya Tagaq, and the layered breath-work of French sound-poet Henri Chopin, but it incorporates laughing and coughing, and employs delay and echo to enhance and abstract the sound of breath.

Track 7, Post Colonial plays on the meditation chant. The two voices, both chanting, weave in and out of harmony, and a third harmonizing voice emerges, that of “the machine,” conjured by electronics. Then, just as this track has established its serene mood, its serenity is undercut by a different type of meditation.

Track 8, Charming compiles a bilingual list of insults, ranging from the common (asshole) to the more imaginative and exemplary (microbe). Kimm’s and O’Hara’s voices alternate in this seedy, misanthropic exercise, but their voices never rise above an intimate conversational hum.

Track 4 Le Corps C’est Trop Physique and Track 10 The Anti-Rules flirt with pop — each has a chorus and a beat. But both tracks complicate any idea of facile, bouncy pop with their blasé tales of failed love, and their admissions of musically inexact singing sung in a child’s warble.

Despite its variety, Ice Machine feels like it could be a single long work, albeit one chopped into fragments, one in which those fragments have been shuffled and re-assembled. The sound is consistent throughout, with an icy electronic hum forming the sonic backdrop for each track. This hum is the sound we hear late on a winter night in downtown Montréal. It is the hum of electricity flowing through a million homes. It is the sound of the nocturnal city, and it can both comfort and menace.

Seduction, love, and confusion are themes that recur, in either D. Kimm’s world-weary, fluid delivery or in Alexis’ wry speak. Mankind plays with genre and expectation, mechanizing the meditative chant, challenging the trite pop tune, and going yet further: Mankind remains unruly, creating itself according to its own impulses.

blogue@press-4383 press@4383
1 avril 2010
Par Vincenzo Giorgio in Wonderous Stories #17 (Italie), 1 avril 2010

Texte

E’ ciò che emerge dalla poetica evidentemente disturbata e “dadaista” (per non dire parafisica) di Mankind (Ice Machine), vale a dire un incredibile duo femminile che sa muoversi con estrema disinvoltura tra “sospiri ritmici post-wyattiani” (Mile End Throat Singers), elettronica schizzata (Todo que tengo) e psyco-minimalismo à la Comelade (The Anti-Rules).

Ignaz Schick e Martin Tétreault (Live • 33 • 45 • 78) si presenta in un contesto ancora più radicale: quattordici tracce di radicalismo estremo dove i due musicisti si dividono non solo i canali (quello di sinistra Ignaz, a destra Martin) ma anche i marchingegni elettronici.

Nous Perçons Les Oreilles (cioè Jean Derome e Joane Hétu) con Shaman ne rappresentano - invece - il contraltare acustico attraverso dodici tracce inesorabilmente segnate dal trionfo del fiatismo improvvisativo (sax, flauti e oggetti vari e la voce stessa).

Dal canto loro Marilyn Lerner, Matt Brubeck e Nick Fraser con Ugly Beauties, pur continuando a muoversi nel campo della free-improvvisation, ci propongono patterns più delineati soprattutto con il “lirismo slabbrato” di Oubliette che, grazie all’ottimo violoncello di Matt si spinge nei pressi di certo camerismo contemporane, così come nell’intensa Figure lisse dove l’interplay “piano/violoncello” sostenuto dalla soffusa batteria di Fraser è davvero notevole.

blogue@press-4130 press@4130
1 janvier 2010
Par Henryk Palczewski in Informator “Ars” 2 #50 (Pologne), 1 janvier 2010

Coupure de presse

blogue@press-4082 press@4082
1 novembre 2009
Par Dolf Mulder in Vital #703 (Pays-Bas), 1 novembre 2009

Texte

«They create intriguing soundscapes in an lo-fi and trashy manner.»

Mankind is the name of a duo that started in 2006 comprised of Alexis O’Hara and D Kimm. They combine sound poetry, noise improvisations and ambient plus performance into something of their own. Ice Machine‚ is the first result from their work. On stage the two multitalented, interdisciplinary performers use costumes, video projections, etc. to complete their multimedia art. It has been a long time ago since I found a manifest by the artists inside a record. But here we have one: "we are fresh and naïve, curious and open to all discipline, media, philosophy or technique. That said, we have an opinion on everything and will speak it regardless of whether it is asked of us." And so on. Although there french poems are not comprehensible for me, there is enough to be enjoyed here. They create intriguing soundscapes in an lo-fi and trashy manner. Very noisy ones like in the instrumental My favorite Agression, with drones like in Post-Colonial. Charming is almost a poppy song and The Anti Rules a chanson.

blogue@press-3900 press@3900
31 août 2009
Par Bart Plantenga in wReck thiS MeSS #1067 (Pays-Bas), 31 août 2009

Texte

«The Canadian duo known as Mankind has produced my favorite CD of 2009.»

The Canadian duo known as Mankind [Alexis O’Hara and D Kimm] has produced my favorite CD of 2009. They combine a teen punk insouciance with an electronic sophistication presented in a raw lo-fi fashion that breathes new life into a corpse choked off all signs of life by the introduction of easy tools and electronic editing that has sucked all humanity and error from its soundscape. Trash poetry, scatology, cut-up techniques, Dada, punk noise aesthetics, voice transformation, literary and audio allusions, produce a work on the level of DJ Shadow, which means using a wide variety of techniques and resources readily available but perhaps neglected to create an aural manifesto that gives them their vitality. Its true dynamics comes from an ability to produce hi-fi using lo-fi aesthetics, to create an elegance out of a tapestry of audio detritus and communication strategies that are post-internationalist — they traverse numerous genres, tactics, languages and eras, which all evokes a Burroughsian dystopia that is not wholly without it compensations and rewards because paranoia and vision imply knowing the patterns and hypocrisies behind information and facing all of this head-on with their psych-sexual analyses of power and its media adjuncts. Live they present an evolving ad hoc multimedia performance using backdrops, video, costumes and this cut-up feel bleeds through on their CD.

blogue@press-4016 press@4016
1 août 2009
Par Eric Hill in Exclaim! (Canada), 1 août 2009

Texte

«Mankind deliver their message(s) at odd angles with subtlety and humour before resistance is ever mounted.»

Alexis O’Hara and D.Kimm make art that thrives on contradictions, in several senses of that word. From their backgrounds in poetry and theatre, the two women have developed an improvised approach to performance art that layers elements of noise rock, spoken word and absurdist humour in its creation. On stage, their stories and observations flow through several languages, ideologies and politics, with enough wit to deflate expectations either liberal or conservative in their leanings. On this debut recording, their musical constructivism is expanded upon and atmospheres that emphasize paranoia, physicality and desire are skilfully created. In interviews, O’Hara has expressed a wilful clumsiness towards electronics that plays a part in the discovery of improvisation. This further imbroglio of intent versus expression helps confuse, defuse and deepen meaning in the too often strident and narrow forms of mono/dialogue. This way, Mankind deliver their message(s) at odd angles with subtlety and humour before resistance is ever mounted.

blogue@press-3869 press@3869

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