juan matos capote: umbra

"Umbra was recorded in 2010 in Barcelona. I used a modified AM radio and a home-made oscillator. I found the radio in the street the previous year, discarded outside a huge warehouse full of electronic ‘garbage’. I took it to my studio and modified it using circuit-bending techniques. Umbra is comprised of ten short pieces. In most of them I played only the modified AM radio, in others just the oscillator, and in some both.” Juan Matos Capote is an artist from the Canary Islands living in Barcelona. He was academically trained as a visual artist, and soon began to incorporate onomatopoeias within his paint- ings and sculptures which dealt mainly with perception. Later on he began to work with sound, building his own devices, generators and registers. Nowadays his work combines both interests. In his performances, he makes use of analogue equipment such as home-made oscillators, circuit-bent toys, radios, hydrophones and other modified electronic devices. Many of his circuits are characterised by random, yet control- lable, behaviours.