‘High, Higher, Highest Fidelity’:

an exploration of lo-fi aesthetics through the lens of experimental music

Artistic Research by Christian Streit Smith With assistance from Hilde Wollenstein

<<I was a fiend before I became a teen

I melted microphones instead of cones of ice cream

Music orientated so when hip-hop was originated

Fitted like pieces of puzzles, complicated

'Cause I grabbed the mic and try to say, "Yes, y'all"

They tried to take it and say that I'm too small

Cool 'cause I don't get upset

I kick a hole in the speaker, pull the plug then I jet (Then I jet)

Back to the lab without a mic to grab

So then I add all the rhymes I had

One after the other one, then I make another one

To this the opposite then ask if the brother's done

I get a cravin' like I fiend for nicotine

But I don't need a cigarette, know what I mean?>>

From ‘Microphone Fiend’ by Eric B. and Rakim

N.B. examples of all references can be found in the documentation footage, made up of 3 videos, a preparation montage, and the 2 video recordings of Santiago Díez Fischer’s piece and Hilde Wollenstein’s piece ‘High, Higher, Highest Fidelity’ both of which were world premieres at the research presentation on November 30th, 2024.

For my residency at Studio Loos, I chose a research topic that is close to my interests but which I had not explored with intent. Lo-fi or ‘Low Fidelity’ in the context of sound is ‘a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate stylistic choice.’ Over the years my work in experimental music has brought be in direct contact with music of this nature. From playing a brick with a metal hammer to bowing a spatula I have found ways to bring out the ‘musical’ from sources and objects normally confined to the kitchen aisle of the grocery store. I need to be clear, I do not try to make ‘normal’ or ‘hi-fi’ music from strange materials. The strangeness is the purpose and the results are a product of the raw and rugged nature of the essence of the sounds I am making. I therefore was intrigued by the idea of a first step towards understanding my path in music making to be a week-long residency at Studio Loos in November of 2024.

Initially the goal was to use the piece ‘under the redwood tree my grave was laid’ by Santiago Díez Fischer as a springboard for the residency. The piece was composed for me as part of a collection of new music for an album I am currently working on that is in post-production with my trio Gyre (Switzerland) and Santiago, and since I was going to be recording the piece around the same time, it made sense to use the residency as a way to prepare for the studio recording. The piece is for amplified bowed spatula and ruler + voice and electronics (tape no processing) all to be performed by a solo performer and so fit well in the aesthetics of lo-fi music. The cheapness and found sound nature of it + the noisey fm quality of the electronics would be a perfect environment to look at how being purposely lo-fi is a desired nature of experimental music.

At the same time I was interested in working with Hilde Wollenstein on a new collaborative piece as well, and was in need of someone to help with logistical aspects of the residency - technical support, production, and assisting in the conceptual framework. Last summer I invited her to join me in sharing the artistic fee and workload of the residency 50/50. (wealth distribution/diy/collaboration are also core lo-fi values). I also thought that based on her thoughts on music and aesthetics she and I would have a shared vision of lo-fi music : ‘I prefer to work in a divers bundle of places, and to have a perfect focus, not a perfect product. My intention to work and commitment to the work should be clear, also when the will is groundless. At the moment, I am specifically interested in music and performance art that is subversive, and wants to short-circuit states of control.’ (from Hilde’s bio)

​​Originally we planned to do the residency in the end of October, a few weeks before I was planning to go to switzerland to record the solo of Santiago, but as it drew closer I realized we needed more time to plan before the residency started, so I made the decision to move the date to November 25-30th, 3 weeks after the recording was done. In fact this ended up being a good decision. I had already recorded the solo once in Paris last Spring, and we had chosen to record it a second time to get a better result and give the material more time to develop in my hands. So by the time of the residency I had been working on the piece for almost eight months.

It is important at this point to stress how delicate and unpredictable the sounds are in ‘Under the redwood tree..’ are. Recording it is also a very different situation than performing it live. In the recording we broke the piece up into sections and were able to focus on perfecting the tiniest details, and also there was not a concern about ‘syncing’ with the electronics since they could be arranged and mixed in after the fact. For the live version it is intended that the person performing (myself) would trigger the electronics with a foot pedal while performing the mostly bowed sounds on the clamped spatula and ruler. However this proved unwieldy for a first performance, so I enlisted Hilde to trigger the electronics and to sing the vocal part at the end of the piece. This was actually a nice solution, giving it more of a duo feel that gave us plenty to work on during the residency. For the future I have determined to simply arrange the electronics with a click track freeing me up to worry more about the sound production.

For Hilde’s piece ‘high, higher, highest fidelity’ we decided to make something more from our backgrounds in improvisation, where in this case the ‘score’ was the sample work that she has been developing for the last few years, and then I would create looping percussion grooves and textures to fit with it. However we decided that fitting with the lo-fi concept of the project, I would not be able to make any loops inside of ableton or a similar daw, and that everything would be played and repeated live with the analogue technology of my body. I did use a single loop pedal during one section to create a feedback texture underneath the rest of what I was playing.

the working process

Hilde and I met several times in september and october leading up to the residency to discuss our interests in lo-fi musics and what it meant to us. After that she worked on developing new pieces of music to try out when we started working together. A few days before the residency began we met at my studio in Rijswijk to try out ‘under the redwood tree’ and to choose some sounds and objects that I thought might fit with the music she had already sent me. I then packed everything up into two suitcases and relocated to Studio Loos for the following week.

We had known from the beginning that we wanted to make the presentation special and unique for Loos’s space. Initially on the first day we set up in the entrance hallway and only used three old beat up guitar amps from the studio collection to spatialize the sound. It was very intimate but not perhaps the most fire safe for a live audience. So we took this ‘cozy’ idea and relocated it to the main room with Hilde and I positioned normally where the audience was and with a select number of chairs in the middle where the performers normally are. We continued to use the guitar and bass amps and purposely leaned into the ‘noisy’ signals that they produced. However, we decided to distribute the live percussion through the stereo P.A. and Subs to give a bit more ‘definition’ to the sound without trying to create a hi-fi image.

We chose to mic the percussion and Hilde’s voice only with the cheapest and most basic of microphones. 3 piezo contact mics all for under 20 euros, 1 condenser akg contact mic for 140 euros, and 3 dynamic sm58s for a combined 240 euros. All in all just under 500 euros for amplifying the sounds. We then actively used the power of eq and gain and d.i. Boxes to bring these to a saturated and warm level, and exaggerated the low/mid end of the sound material which you normally can only here in these contexts. One mic in particular produced a great amount of ground hum which we actively manipulated as an additional favorable sound source (which would normally be ‘unfavorable’).

Finally outside of using Ableton to trigger the samples for ‘under the redwood tree’ I used no computer, and Hilde triggered all of her samples for her piece in Rekordbox (an open source professional dj software). That decision was due more to Ableton deciding to freeze everytime a midi controller was connected but there quite a few ‘magical’ breaks in technology that I won’t go into that occurred over the week that pushed us further and further into the lo-fi depths.

For lighting and aesthetics we used three living room lamps and chose only dark chairs and furniture available in the Studio. The audience was just the right size for what we created and the visitors spoke at length about how we managed to create a relaxed environment for soaking up the sound.

the conclusion

All in all I was very happy with how the residency turned out, and I’m especially grateful to Hilde’s contribution and assistance during the week. We spent a lot of time making the space work for the music, so even though we only started working on Hilde’s piece the night before the show, the work flowed naturally from what we created in the space, despite the technological breakdowns that occurred. I also learned a lot about my own practice, and how I have been doing lo-fi aesthetics longer than for just one residency, and perhaps as a life long perfectionist I am drawn to imperfect states as a reaction/salve to this sometimes very negative personality trait.

I will leave you with an excerpt from the Elizabeth Smart book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept that Santiago took the title ‘under the redwood tree my grave was laid’ from:

<<Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, and I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud, and kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, and our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate.

Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour.

Oh, canary, sing out in the thunderstorm, prove your yellow pride. Give me a reason for courage or a way to be brave. But nothing tangible comes to rescue my besieged sanity, and I cannot decipher the code of the eucalyptus thumping on my roof.

I am unnerved by the opponents of God, and God is out of earshot. I must spin good ghosts out of my hope to oppose the hordes at my window. If those who look in see me condescend to barricade the door, they will know too much and crowd in to overcome me.

The parchment philosopher has no traffic with the night, and no conception of the price of love. With smoky circles of thought he tries to combat the fog, and with anagrams to defeat anatomy. I posture in vain with his weapons, even though I am balmed with his nicotine herbs.

Moon, moon, rise in the sky to be a reminder of comfort and the hour when I was brave.>>