Reviews


From Aquarius Records:
 

album cover HORAFLORA Gland Canyon (Install Records) cd-r 8.98
Bay Area sound artist Raub Roy goes by the name of Horaflora; and his performances are really impressive exercises in controlled electro-acoustic chaos, with low-tech electronics skittering above various tactile scrapes counterpointed by reversed currents of placid bass frequencies and tonal undulation. One of his best performance stunts is to fill up large balloons, shove a trumpet mouthpiece inside the balloon, and drop the metal mouthpiece on a large drumhead. With two of these devices going, Horaflora can generate prolonged vibration and acoustically phased drones that are really amazing.
Gland Canyon is a small run edition released by Instal Records (which had released a Caretaker disc a while back, although this shares little aesthetic similarity), and works through many of the clamorous, decomposing sounds that Horaflora generates in a live setting. It can't be qualified as 'noise' as these collages are more in keeping with a tradition of automatic writing through sound, with idiosyncratic juxtapositions of electronic bloops, ring modulated flanges, minuscule clatter of wood and metal, mad-scientist weirdo percolations, and those sublimated balloon drones. As such it's more in keeping with some of the HNAS collages or something deconstructed from Small Cruel Party and old P.16.D4 tapes. The various tracks ebb and flow with an unhurried pace that slowly magnifies some of the many sounds into more sparse hypno-repetitive passages and then sweep everything into rather dense crescendos of scattershot sediment. Limited to 100 copies.
MPEG Stream:
"oRFLooRE"
MPEG Stream: "Goargalor Fantasy '54"



 From Foxy Digitalis:                     



Ralph White & The Horaflora Sound System


Two players: White, who plays kalimbas (a thumb piano variant), fiddles, and banjo; and Raub at the wheel of the Horaflora Sound System (prepared speakers and objects plus transducers). It’s unclear if this music was improvised together or assembled from separate recordings. The question isn’t really important because the music is so incredibly neat sounding and nice. There are moments of oddly soothing metallic plinking and patter (“Buzzard and Rattlesnake Share A Meal of Honeycomb”), skeletal violins echoing across pools of mercury (“A Space Between A Chimney and A Swift”), and bike spoke banjo touring arctic and equatorial environments (“Wildflower Face, Insect Eyes”). Technically an electroacoustic album, it never feels like a study on some type of compositional device. It’s just great listening. The interplay is often surprising and textures overlap serendipitously. The song with the droning fiddle verges on the psych folk; especially when entwined with Raub’s sparkling transducer pitches. Inspired stuff. 8/10 -- Mike Pursley (31 March, 2010)





Ralph White and Horaflora Sound System release party (SF) reviewed on a bluegrass forum(!):





























"Hey y'all. I feel weird being the first on the new version of this forum, there was a bunch of interesting stuff here before... Hoping some of it can be reposted.
Anyhows I just watched Danny's old buddy Ralph White play an experimental set and thought it would be of interest here. He did a collaboration with a fella that goes by the name of Hora Flora. His mbiras and banjo were amplified through an assortment of objects instead of a regular PA. Hora Flora had a bunch of tiny speakers and he would balance them on big metal dishes or stack rocks and tin foil and stuff on them. There was a little subwoffer with rocks all over it, or sometimes a plastic bag would be stretched over it. This would either cause the object to resonate with frequencies Ralph was putting out or make crazy distortion. All this stuff was spread out in front of the stage and sometimes even out in the crowd a little bit. It worked in a really cool way with the percussive nature of the instruments. Mbiras typically have a chain or something that lays across the keys to get a rattling sound, and this was a sort of an extension of that, except instead of a little chain or something it was mostly garbage from the modern world that was somewhat frantically being arranged on the fly as Ralph's sounds passed through. Since all this stuff was vibrating it would kinda fall apart at points and Hora Flora would have to run around like a crazy man to keep things balanced or rearrange them. You could tell Ralph was getting a big kick out of it. They did one song with little tape recorders placed all around the room playing a fiddle drone, which was extra cool. They have a CD out together on this label - http://www.resipiscent.com/ - and you can hear some short samples on the site. The first track is binaural, so if you listen on headphones you're plopped down in the middle of all the crazy resonating objects as they're moved around and played with. I think it's a cool CD and an innovative concept in the treatment of traditional sounds. Hooray for folktronics!"
-Stin-G, Danny Barnes Forum

Live in Austin, TX W/ weird weeds and peace, loving
The bands that played after Weird Weeds were equally compelling.  A touring band from Massachusetts named Peace, Loving played a long, interrupted set that incorporated woozy drones, nature noises, tape manipulations, and menacing spoken-word rants about the volatility of nature.
After Peace, Loving’s set, local folk musician Ralph White collaborated with a Californian sound artist named Horaflora for an improvisational set that ranks with my all-time favorite live music experiences.  Ralph played an amplified kalimba, which was run through a mixer connected to various tiny speakers.  Horaflora set these speakers atop various percussion instruments and sheets of paper.  As the speakers vibrated on these objects, they generated loud waves of distortion that circled the entire house.  The sounds were similar to those generated by Congolese ensemble Konono No. 1 on their homemade instruments.  I spent their whole set with my eyes closed, letting the distortion singe my ears and soothe my spirit.  I live for moments like that.

Testafye!
"Gland Canyon is the destination getaway of the season! Languidly ride down steep, marrow trails on helpful cilia, then thrill to the corpuscular rapids, as you shoot the creamy flow within! A delight!"

-Chris Cooper, angst hase pfeffer nase, fat worm of error