SPECTRES: composed entirely of in-situ recordings with tone generators in 9 post-Communist architectures, it presents an interrogation of contemporary society across the threshold of the architecture from a former, but recent, epoch. A statement at that epoch’s inception, “alles Ständische und Stehende verdampft”, is often poetically translated as “all that is solid melts into air”, but literally is “all that is Standing and has Stood [will] vapourise”. These ‘Standing entities’ incorporate institutions (‘Bodies’) and corporations - in physical terms: the architectures and the utopian sociocultural visions these architectures framed.

SPECTRES uses the air itself to interrogate a series of post-Communist architectural locations across Poland via a simple intervention/modulation: drawing the surrounding air and current manifestation of contemporary political and geographical economies into the buildings, their volumes: the very monuments of those that Stood and are Standing, the dwellings and inhabitations of the corporatised Bodies. SPECTRES’ 10day recording in 2019 traversed cultural centres, social housing projects through to northern and southern centres of the Polish Solidarity movement at its 30year anniversary, their architectures present a threshold, framing each location and context. [Commissioned by MUTO & UH Festival (Hungary) with SHAPE platform (EU)]

Mixed at: MUTO (2019). The Ashes, Cork (2019) and Connemara, Ireland (2020).
Mastered by Antti Saario, Cornwall, 2020.

SPECTRES also tours as a live light/sound collaboration with Kat McDowall

REVIEWS:
"The scale and scope of Ireland-based artist Robert Curgenven’s latest work is almost too massive to comprehend. Altogether, Beyond Enclosures fulfills the promise of its title, as Curgenven pushes his music outside physical limits into the transcendental." - Marc Masters, Bandcamp Daily, Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp for October 2021

"decisively orientating the receptive apparatus towards a mesmerized condition... while keeping our alert level sufficiently high...  However, the significance of the whole lies in the insidious resonances initiated by overtones of different types and intensity. This writer was left in a state of marvelous vacillation: eager to continue the learning process, delighted to have been glimpsed by the inexplicable wonder caused by unintended patterns of engagement." - Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes (IT)

"Writing about Curgenven's music is a backbreaking endeavour. How, after all, can one render the anxiety associated with the distinct sensation of sound waves approaching the ear? Or the cognitive dissonance of the “Bardo” listener, arising from a perspective disrupted by the composer, resulting in the unusual leveling of certain sounds?" - Filip Lech, Ruch Muzyczny (PL)

"encapsulates so much [of what] I already love about Robert’s work.. the palability of air flow - how harmonics illuminate how air is pulsing, bristling" - Jack Chuter, ATTN Magazine's Crucial Listening podcast (UK)

"an ambitious three-disc set for pipe organ, piano and turntables, exploring the natures of music and air.  The third disc holds a live concert from the Sydney Festival.. it has an experimental approach and takes the form of modern composition, yet has the tone of drone...  The outside sounds lend the project a solemn authenticity." - A Closer Listen (USA)

"Curgenven serves up three releases all connected to 'air'... In each case the context very much brings an added dimension to the act of listening" - Jeremy Allen, Electronic Sound magazine (UK)

"Superb... three sublime studies in shifting air in built space via organ, soundsystems and turntables." - Seth Cooke, Every Contact Leaves a Trace (UK)

Best of 2021 - "captivating new solo album...Curgenven - highly regarded for his majestic, coruscating pipe organ through to feedback, immersive resonances via turntables and custom-made vinyl, as well as carefully detailed field recordings, experimental turntable techniques inter-woven with piano and extended pipe organ techniques with an enveloping, often ecstatic and mystic effect recalling resonances and sound intended as a physical field of perception." - SoundOhm (IT)

"this is a sound record of an incredible realm that easily transcends the boundaries of installation or sound art. An important publication product for 2021." Art-Into-Life (JPN)