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from disquiet.com:

Sonic Exploration by Marc McNulty (MP3)

Were the Barrons, of Forbidden Planet soundtrack fame, still alive and working today, they might very well sound like Marc McNulty, the musician and sound artist whose explorations of small sonic spaces result in squiggling effects that suggest an otherworldly aura. He recently contributed a half-hour performance to the Rare Frequency podcast series (rarefrequency.com), and it's a characteristically internecine journey through microscopic dank pockets of slomo whirligigs, melting tonal affect, and tantalizing garbles (MP3). Which is to say, it sounds both like a modern use of digital audio tools to explore audio objects, and like the special effects from an ancient science fiction film. Tomorrow's music is yesteryear's foley sounds.

Much more on McNulty as his website, earphone.org, which is generous with MP3s. According to a post on his site, the piece performed on Rare Frequency is titled Lamictal, which appears to be the name of a prescription drug used to treat bipolar disorder and epilepsy.

By Marc Weidenbaum


from vital weekly 587 by franz de waard:

MARC MCNULTY - CODE INCONNU (CDR by Earphone)
MARC MCNULTY - LE L'EGENDE D'EER [DIATOPE]] (CDR by Earphone)
Now it's official: Marc McNulty is back. About a decade ago his name came up with various releases, then he moved out of sight for a while but now he's back. These two releases on his own Earphone label are very very recent recordings. 'Code Inconnu' was 'recorded July 2007', which it still is as we write. 'Code Inconnu' deals with recordings made in Montreal and on the bridges in Boston. There is are people talking and whatever field recordings can be made on a bridge. There are similarities between this and John Hudak's 'Brooklyn Bridge' or even better the CD by Tom Hall: McNulty plays shorter pieces than Hudak, but some of the drone related material is more like Hudak than Hall's sometimes technoid rhythm pieces. He reworks the material in good electro-acoustic fashion, which musicwise was not too far from some of the recent material by Asmus Tietchens. Good sturdy work going on here, and not rhythmic as on his previous 'Asymetric Error Propagation' (see Vital Weekly 582). Quite powerful stuff, certainly not academic, but perhaps that's what I like about this kind of acousmatic music.
In 'Le L'egende d'eer [Diatope], McNulty does a 'recontextualisation' of Iannis Xenakis piece which was originally for '8 tracks of independent tapes an to be performed/played within an existing piece of architecture'. Here the space are the ears of the listeners. I am not sure if McNulty uses the same sounds as Xenakis, but somehow I think so, but perhaps he's also feeds them through his own fine blend of processing devices. There are eight voices to be detected in this work, which sort of move forward in a linear fashion. (FdW)

| from vital weekly 549 by franz de waard:

MARC MCNULTY - FARADAY CAGE (CDR by Earphone)
MARC MCNULTY - NEURONTIN (CDR by Earphone)
Vital Weekly 138: that is how far back we had to search for a review of music by Marc McNulty. If you would have asked before hearing these new works, how did the old McNulty sound, I would perhaps describe something that is not too dissimilar from the two recent releases. I have no idea what McNulty has been doing in the long gap, but apparently he has been involved in producing sound installations in galleries around the world and played support act for Raster-noton artists. McNulty has moved from the older analogue works into using self-designed software tools, to create his overall mood related atmospherical music. His input consists of shortwave radio transmissions and field recordings, which are filtered in a pretty nice way into lengthy chunks of atmospherics. Even when the press text talks about industrial, techno and minimalism, but surely ambient is the best place for this music. There are differences to be noted between the two releases. 'Faraday Cage' sounds more electronic and has lengthier tracks, whereas the seven pieces of 'Neurontin' are much shorter and seems to be built largely on field recordings: birds, people walking and street sounds. I preferred 'Neurontin' over 'Faraday Cage', since the latter sounded good but walked a bit too much in familiar territory for me, whereas the first had a pretty exciting processing of field recordings, and McNulty proofs to be one of the more interesting composers of microsound. (FdW)

from: sonic-boom.com (review of Powdered Iron Rods, CD, on Plate Lunch)

Packaged in a metal tin is Marc McNulty's debut release. This 500 count limited edition release consists of five audio experiments in waveforms, sound fields and aural regions. While technically Ambient music, don't pigeon hole Mr. McNulty into the same realm as artists like Steve Roach or Robert Rich. This music is completely artificial and based on scientific principles. The music is rich in deep bass tones that serve as a foundry for the core complex sound waves. Drones, pitch spikes, warbles, and generated tones all percolate and permeate the music, flittering into the mix randomly and colliding with each other. The liner notes explicitly state that all elements on this CD are from elements from our pre-atomic days. This definitely explains all of analogue textures on "Powdered Iron Rods". One wonders what other tools Marc used because it appears that many elements were sampled and a sampler has only been in existence for the last two decades.

from: sonic-boom.com (review of Photophobia - Cathepsin, CS, on Tiln)



Have you ever stumbled into a music store and buy accident picked out an album that later came to be the prize of your collection? This tape fits into that category. When it arrived in the mail I was expecting a noise and feedback type of sound, but instead I was extremely to pleased to hear something quite different. Marc McNulty could quite possibly be considered a junior Brian Lustmord. The music in this cassette has deep haunting qualities, sonic rumblings not quite unlike many of Lustmord works. The recording quality by any means is not at the same level, but the music itself comes very close. Anyone who enjoys extensive ambient soundscapes rolling through ancient dungeons and echoing through lost corridors will enjoy this release.

Photophobia is: Marc McNulty

musique concréte, musique électronique, Elektronische Musik, Electronic Music, électroacoustique, electroacústica, Electroacoustic Music, acousmatique, musique pour bande, Tape Music, Tonbandmusik, Computer Music, Digital Music, cinéma pour l'oreille, Cinema for the Ear, art des sons fixés, Organized Sound, art audio, Audio Art, bruitisme, rumore, Noise, Electronica, IDM, lowercase sound, microsons, microsuoni, Microsound