UnCaged: 33'4''

Running Time: 33:12

Released On: "Silence" - Various Artists (71 tracks)

Label: Camembert Électrique

Release Date: 5th December 2021

Format: Download

Buy Link: Bandcamp

< 4:33 Edit / Meditative Mix - 33:04 >

The legend himself, the photo we used on "The Cage Variations",

taken on his receiving the 1989 Kyoto Prize for services to music

"There is no such thing as silence." The words of John Cage immediately sprang to mind when we saw that Camembert Électrique were doing a compilation on the theme. Now, to be fair, we've explored that thesis from several different angles already; our wind battered version of 4'33'' on Knott End jetty, my solo re-take of it on a more peaceful day (and with a wind muff on the microphone!), not to mention Skit's idea that nothing proved that postulation more effectively than a hedgetrimmer (or two, grrr)! But this compilation wasn't about the impossibility of silence, it was about the item itself. We were keen to come up with something both appropriate and interesting, Yann Pillas' label was one we'd been aware of for some time and were keen to get some material on. To his credit, Skit took it seriously and never mentioned power tools once, or indeed any kind of

noise generating apparatus. He would, of course, have his moment to come, as you will already know if you've read the article about Who Is Earthshine? on the previous page.

Our conclusion was that a work on silence could not include silence, that would be too obvious. As I'd already mentioned in said previous article, Twizz has a white noise machine in her room to block noise (not my snoring, that's simply a malicious rumour spread by my wife, don't encourage her), which could be taken as creating an artificial or 'new silence', being the best we are likely to achieve in this modern industrialised world. So we opted for this, a piece we feel is almost the antithesis of Cage's 4'33''. Rather than present the listener with nothing, allowing them to hear all other sounds in their surrounding environment, we blended white, pink and brown noise so the listener would ultimately be able to hear nothing but.

To complete this concept of antithesis, we opted for the title UnCaged and set the running time to 33 minutes and 4 seconds. The piece is performed in three movements, as was Cage's original, and the length of each is in direct proportion to those, right down to the 1/1000th of a second (OCD may have its plus points, but it also has its drawbacks). I realise there's some debate about this, but we took it from the horse's mouth, the John Cage official website, on which it states that;

The first version of the work contains three movements lasting 33", 2'40" and 1'20"

Thus ours has three movements lasting 3'59.824'', 19'22.784'' and 9'41.392'', each fading up to and down from a central peak, so the listener can experience their surroundings in all states from effective 'silence' to recording only. Et voila.

P.S. The more observant amongst you may have noticed that, although the lengths of the three movements add up to exactly 33'4'', the running time is listed as 33:12 (33:12.66 to be precise), yes? That's simply because we included short breaks between the movements, both exactly lasting 4.33 seconds each!

LINK FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON JOHN CAGE:

https://www.johncage.org

A SOLUBLE SYMPHONY