‘Harmonium II’ is the new album from London-based artist Zheng Hao. Across two side long pieces, she manipulates feedback into clumps of pure tone and interruptions of chirping, chirruping high frequencies.
It follows her recent album for Krim Kram, "Breaks", and more directly, "Harmonium", released on Hard Return in 2022. With her duo, Oishi (alongside Ren Shang), she released "once upon a time there was a mountain" on Bezirk in 2023.
As Hao explains, Harmonium II should not be viewed as a follow-up to the first Harmonium but a parallel exploration of the same ideas and themes: “’Harmonium’ refers to a type of balanced feedback, more specifically, a resonance,” she says.
Where the first Harmonium involved controlling tones from a harmonica, no traditional acoustic instruments are present on this installment. Instead, Hao explores loops of recording devices and listening technology fed into a modular synth. On the first side, 'I', she turns a Zoom recorder – a tool used by field recordists to capture sound - into an instrument. Placing headphones close to the Zoom’s microphones, she tuned the feedback tones generated into sine waves from her modular synth. In a poetic twist, this approach creates an electronic world with the verdancy of a soundscape. Low, rumbling tones give the impression of an aircraft passing overhead. Squeaking high frequencies sound like voluble wildlife. Hypnotic pulses and beating tones emerge as her movements shift the system. Through recursion and gesture comes a tentative approximation of organic life.
“I’m moving the headphones around so that it feels a bit like insects coming in and out,” Hao explains. “There’s also a low frequency feedback from the Zoom recorder itself, and I’m fading that feedback into a modular generated low sine wave as a transition, and then gradually fade the modular sound to a phantom rhythm. Then again and again.”
For the second side Hao uses a reverb pedal and a mixing desk. Opening with a bed of stridulating bleeps and buzzes, human gestures can be heard in the system once more, gentle sweeps and waves eventually held in a suspended drone. Equilibrium arrives as humming tones bend, curve and fold into each other. It’s a more meditative piece than the first side, a bed of sounds that could be coarse and jarring frequencies coalesced into something utterly other, and utterly compelling.
In Hao’s practice, conventional relations between performer and sound sources are twisted. Sound becomes malleable. Graspable without the obstructions and limitations of a conventional instrument or a DAW. Reference points for her music could be the visceral sound explorations of Maryanne Amacher, the haptic feedback sculpting of Rafael Torral, and the no-input mixing board experiments of Toshimaru Nakamura. It undoubtedly also chimes with the recent release on Bezirk by Regan Bowering. Although using different tools and reaching different outcomes, for both, signal paths are hacked and rearranged, feedback is embraced, and gestures are translated into sonic phenomena. Sounds that are typically discarded or avoided are held onto for their affective, textural and interactive possibilities. The unfamiliar sensations residing in unconventional sound sources are embraced.
“Feedback- for me, is less about the sound output and more about enjoying the 'control' during the performance process,” Hao explains. “It’s like a tug-of-war between me and the feedback, listening very intently to the sounds in the speakers, my fingers tightly pressing on the mixer knobs cautiously to prevent any distortions. I enjoy the feeling of this back-and-forth and the vibrations that occur when feedback happens, which feels warm to me, or maybe it’s because I’m usually sweating when I’m playing with feedback…”
Zheng Hao is a sound artist and experimental musician, born in Wuhan, China, currently based in London, United Kingdom. She is a member of the duos Oishi (with Ren Shang) and ecm (with Joseph Khan). Her solo works explore electronic and electro-acoustic instruments, including modular synthesis and feedback. She has released music on Otoroku, Falt, Molt Fluid, Krim Kram, and Research Laboratories.
