Sounds like a much higher-fidelity version of the sounds I used to get with Metasynth. In other words, additive synthesis but a version that emphasizes artifacts rather than trying to suppress them.
The process I envision is, take drum sounds, do a very high-resolution short-time FFT, throw away phase and resynthesize. The “throwing away phase” is probably most important here. Actually, resynthesis would go beyond just throwing away phase and taking inverse FFT’s – one can just use a bunch of sine oscillators (I’m guessing 4096, 8192, 16384…) centered at FFT bins, start all with zero phase and vary their amplitudes according to the magnitude spectrum. Don’t even worry about overlapping windows, inverse FFT’s, or anything that would attempt to reconstruct the original signal. Certainly don’t worry about computational efficiency.
The extremely high frequency resolution and hence low time resolution of the FFT has two effects: 1) masks transients (an old “acousmatic” effect from Pierre Schaeffer), so it’s not immediately obvious that the source material is drum samples; 2) creates a tension between the extreme high-fidelity of the analysis and the emphasis of artifacts in resynthesis.
As well, and critically, there is a fundamental tension between both effects that grounds the entirety of Lazar’s approach.
Ordinarily in acousmatic treatments, according to Schaeffer;s basic idea, the “organic” nature of recorded sound brings forth a hospitable sound-world in which the listener can feel at home. This world is revealed once the event-origins of the original materials have been obscured. In other words, the listener is no longer distracted by recognizing drums, violins, trains, scrap metal and so on, and can become fully immersed in the pure abstract qualities of these sounds, qualities that are strangely inviting and familiar.
Critically though, the “uncanny” aspect of effect #2, an aspect that through the extreme high-fidelity analysis also masks its own origins, refuses the listener precisely this immersion and familiarity.
Instead of a world inviting and familiar, Lazar’s “negative acousmatic” brings forth a void, a non-world, something no less alluring (like a black hole) but in the end completely hostile to human presence.
It is as if the “uncanniness” of the uncanny valley were distilled, acousmatically severed from its origins in simulation, becoming pure and free-floating.
