Craig Vear / ESK
"River Esk, Frozen”, recorded at the North Yorkshire Coast, was one of the highlights of Aud Ralph Roas’le. Craig Vear‘s follow-up moves further up the coastline, tracing the river “from source to sea”. The result is a sound sculpture with a clear focus and a literal sense of direction, one that demands multiple listens yet retains its allure no matter how many times it’s played. (Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration; I can vouch for the first dozen plays.)
In order to capture these recordings, Vear traveled upriver, beginning at the harbour and ending at the Esklets. He then merged and re-arranged his recordings so that the piece would reflect a river flowing to the sea. Ironically, this causes ESK to flow backward in time from spring to winter, but the seasonal changes are less obvious than the gradual shift from the natural to the manmade. This aspect of the recording is as inescapable as the fact that it is produced by a human being; there’s really no way to capture something like this without the intrusion of the human element. This also applies to unplanned sound – passersby, workers, transport systems. As Gordon Hempton complains in One Square Inch of Silence, there’s little escape from the presence of technology, whether chronic noise or air traffic. By contrast, each bird, cow, duck and even domesticated dog comes as a welcome surprise; while they are not made out of water, they are part of the river’s extended environment and as such deserve their inclusion. There is one sound here that is totally unwelcome, although it doesn’t arrive until 36:11: an over-miked creak that sounds a bit like a drunk logger. Since it arrives at the tail end of a section containing the woodpecker repetitions of unidentified machinery, it’s not a total startler; but the piece would have been better without it. This being said, the contrast leads one to meditate on the intersection between the land and its inhabitants, so perhaps it has a purpose after all.
The sound of water is obviously this recording’s raison d’être, and Vear’s equipment is extremely effective in capturing not only crispness, but depth. As a sound sculpture, as opposed to an untreated field recording, ESK moves through various phases, retaining a busyness that is not often found in real life. Listening is not entirely like walking downriver; instead, it’s like pulling over every once in a while to take in the sonic field. This provides for great contrast between loud sounds (the waterfall-like tendencies of the Esklets) and the quiet (the river’s flatter, slower rest stops). At times, the apparent sources change as rapidly as pages in a book; for example, the rush that turns into a trickle in the 19th minute, followed by what sounds like breaking ice in the 20th and a deluge in the 21st. These same sounds tumble and return in the ensuing two minutes. If one were to stride beside the Esk, one would not encounter such sudden changes in timbre, but they lend the recording a sense of excitement that is not often found in the field. A close cousin might be Cedric Peyronnet’s Taurion River project, in that Peyronnet’s recordings arrive in both static and redacted forms.
Vear’s Antarctica and Summerhouses were both effective (especially the former in its multi-media presentation), but Vear shines in the extended format like a good short story writer who suddenly discovers he’s a great novelist. ESK is easily Vear’s best work to date: concentrated yet versatile, speechless yet profound. The snowy greeting card packaging makes the release seem like a communication from a friend. After hearing and seeing the Esk, one yearns to visit it as well; no greater compliment can be given.
Terje Paulsen & Ákos Garai / VERTIKALE SKIFT
An initial look at the digital download implies that the tracks are out of order: five “Skisse” tracks from Norway’s Terje Paulsen interspersed with four “Waterworks” tracks from Hungary’s Ákos Garai, founder of the 3leaves label. And yet to separate the two is the dim the light of the entire project. Paulsen and Garai were onto something with their game plan, because the album works best with the current track sequencing. Skisse is the Norwegian word for sketch or study, and Paulsen’s quieter contributions do at first seem like outlines: the impressionistic borders to Garai’s glistening sheets. A puzzle needs a frame, and the contrast between the thick and the thin helps the listener to appreciate both. In “Waterworks I”, the water sounds like a burst pipe; in the second segment, the deluge has slowed to a trickle, but wanders speaker-to-speaker like an unidentifiable leak. Paulsen surrounds these entries with his own studies of static and silence, guaranteeing that the white noise and whirl of “Waterworks III” will be welcomed when they arrive. But by the end of this piece, Garai seems to have turned contemplative as well; perhaps the two are not so far apart as they initially seemed. As each composer presents his final piece, Vertikale Skift morphs into a single tale.
Ákos Garai / Interview for The Field Reporter
Ákos Garai is a sound artist who also runs the label 3LEAVES. His works "Barges and Flows" and "Vertikale Skift" (with Terje Paulsen) and the releases published by 3LEAVES during 2011 all were positively welcomed by the press and the listeners and were featured by many artists, curators and journalists among the most important works of the year. We invited him to answer a few questions about his work, his label and their line of work, that we hope serves our readers to have an insight to Ákos' work and to his label 3LEAVES.
We would like to thank him for his words and in general for his supportive attitude with The Field Reporter through our first five months.
Alan Smithee
Do you have a particular memory about how you started to get intrigued by sound?
Yes. It started when I was a young child, long before I started to listen to any music from vinyl or cassettes. I think I had a kind of sensitivity to observe, in fact, to enjoy the sounds of the world were around me at that time. Of course, it was not a conscious thing but it was enough to capture my attention for hours. When I think back now, I still have something somewhere from these sound experiences (even in its degraded form) in my memory, and it is a good and interesting thing for me.
Is there a specific subject, issue or question or that you feel you are trying to articulate through your work with sound?
Yes, definitely. There is always a starting idea or premise of what I would like to achieve with my sound. But these are not narrow limits to me, because when I am working in the fields life often overrides these ideas which I never stand against. So it is also the case to find out more or something completely different. I could compare this a little to when you walk in an open meadow and the rain suddenly starts falling, you will adapt to this changed environment and you will go to do something differently than before the event. Of course, I do not think it would be possible to create something, anything with "no footprint"; however, I also try to subordinate and to skip myself and placed into the background. With field recording, this attitude is more than expected; when working with processed sound it is a little bit different where a different kind of creativity is required.
How important is the action of capturing sounds in your work nowadays?
Important to me out there – as far as possible. Practically, I like to care about every detail when I go to make recordings. I think the technical stuff and everything that entails. Field work is always interesting even if I return with an empty card or something useless.
What disciplines other than sound art and music (Ex. fine arts, science, political science-journalism, philosophy, literature, film, architecture-design,…) have had influence on your sound work and how?
In fact, it is hard to tell. Mainly I could specify time i.e. events I spend with active observation. I cannot emphasize or get rid of anything from it. Obviously, we record all that we can hear or see or above our senses. But film certainly is something that is very far from me. Not interested at all.
What lead you to start a label? How you articulate the label manager work with your process as an artist?
The motivation of starting 3LEAVES was a bit complex. Around years 2007-2008, I did not see a label other than the highly respected Gruenrekorder which, clearly committed itself to field recordings and operated as a traditional label and also represented high artistic value. It seemed to me, there is a little "white hole" between the labels to fill so I decided to begin to create a creative publishing forum for artist who are committed to nature & environment and works primarily as a recordist. On the other hand, I wrote a little history with my label because this is the first label which deals and releases phonography works in Hungary. But the greatest pleasure is that I can manage new recordings from all over the world and to transmit them to others through my releases. I really like to give something good to people, and I cannot imagine a better way than with music!
How would you measure the balance between intuition and knowledge in your work as a 3LEAVES curator?
Both are equally important to me. Something like the left and right.
What are your thoughts about the importance of the figure of the "label" and the physical release in a world that sometimes turns to more DIY and digital dynamics?
Perhaps because of my age, I think a label that releases in physical formats is still important. The good thing with vinyl and compact disc and its artwork not only that you can hand something lasting to your listeners, in addition, to listen to music on CDs, LPs is assuming a quiet environment paired with at least a good-quality stereo playback system in an acoustic space; plus a comfortable sofa or seat where is a good thing to lay down and listening to music. Perhaps all this is just an anachronistic romantic approach now… but it works; Many people including me do like to have a release on their shelf; others prefer a digital copy only – but that is alright. Yes, it is widely believed that everyone can be their own publisher today, since only two clicks – and you are done. Despite of this, I know a lot of artist who never would do so rather find a label that they appreciate and like to have a release on. Maybe this is a strange paradox: to have something invisible (music) on something visible (physical release) but I definitely believe in this.
How relevant and useful have been the reviews and press in general written on regard of 3LEAVES and its published releases?
It is always a pleasure to me to get to know someone's impressions, opinions regarding any of 3LEAVES releases. Yes, it is important, relevant and can be useful too. It is a wonderful thing to imagine that someone is listening to your music, maybe on the other side of the world, and something happens to him or her which, then reacts back to the entire world. It is like dropping a small stone into the ocean and watching feedback circles created by. Wonderful.
Pierre Gerard / ENVIRONMENT & gesture
ENVIRONMENT and gesture is the new release from Pierre Gerard, a Frenchman who is making a form of very gentle intervention in our daily surroundings with his near-imperceptible sonic actions, a strategy which to some extent aligns him with Jeph Jerman. His two main objectives are (a) to produce improvisations using common objects, not in the sense that he "dominates" the object like an imperialist invader seizing handfuls of sand, but rather to arrive at an integrated and harmonious situation where man and nature are brought one step closer to happy co-existence. As to (b), this concerns the more metaphysical ambition where he hopes his work will have an effect on time itself, causing a "soft impression" on the listener such that time starts to slide past in a more gentle and manageable manner, presumably a welcome antidote to the pressures of modern urban life where time has been sliced and parcelled into rigid divisions that suit the capitalist agenda. Gerard attempts the above by situating himself in a determinedly rural setting (water, stone and air are his materials) and creating gentle sounds which may involve dropping stones into a pond or engaging with a stream of water in some sympathetic way. The long 20-minute track contains such sounds occurring in sproadic intervals with lots of silence, and it feels isolated, stark, minimal beyond belief. However by the end of the album the external sounds of the environment also begin to appear, and help to put the work into context. I have reproduced the exact typographical rendering of the title of this release, which clearly stresses the element which Gerard regards as the more important of the two in his symbiotic relationship. 250 copies in hand-made chipboard package with a nice photo of a cairn built by the artist.
Hiroki Sasajima & Takahisa Hirao / HIDDEN BIRD'S NEST
“A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”- Stanley Kubrick
“…the significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth.” - Kazimir Malevich
On the liner notes of Hidden Bird’s Nest -written by Daniel Crokaert- reads “…and one gets the feeling that suddenly the whole Cosmos is almost enclosed in a single resonance just in front of your ears…”
There is no available information about the recordings used in this release, although it can be inferred that they were captured in some sort of forest. They are also recordings from a musical performance with drums and voices.
Although there are plenty of works using field recordings from the forest, this release has a very unique approach to them. The tactile qualities of the recordings in this release ara quite powerful: the listener gets to feel very close to every sound creating this microscopic effect that develops an aura of intimacy that strongly affects the sensible experience of the listener keeping him amused, surprised and immersed. The great detail and the subtle polyphony occurring after the variety and multitude of sounds happening in the recordings creates a feeling of deep immersion and strong awareness that sets the emotional tone for the full 44 minutes.
Although most of the release is based on field recordings, on Woodland there is a long grave sound that opens the piece. This 5-minute segment establishes an emotional narrative structure of great depth and contrast that creates the emotional context where the whole release will develop.
When Daniel Crokaert writes “…Cosmos is almost enclosed in a single resonance” he couldn’t be closer from the truth: there is loads of scientific and artistic research around the sounds from the big bang roaring across the universe. Artist and philosopher Johnaton Keats has worked on the subject for some time and scientist Mark Whittle published this very interesting paper “Big Bang acoustics” where he tries to understand certain universe processes through the sounds occurring in of the universe. The microscopic effect works as a telescopic effect as well. Seemingly every sound occurring in the cosmos becomes part of this big resonance we experience on every sound we listen.
Hidden Bird’s Nest is a great example of how the sounds of nature offer an infinite universe for the artists that they are ought to explore and inhabit with their emotions. Very effective artistic work that offers a deep, intimate and emotional perceptual journey into sound.
Pierre Gerard / ENVIRONMENT & gesture
In the moment when silence and its weak ruptures become unbearable for a man to sustain, a music based on those very characteristics is equally problematic. When an artist works with micro-elements such as Belgian Pierre Gerard, the challenge is that of pushing a listener to find new implications within acoustic milieus exploited to the bone. ENVIRONMENT & gesture is a three-part piece whose linearity is somewhat displacing; even more puzzling is the positive reaction of this reviewer in front of natural components – mostly water and faraway environmental whispers, with the addition of an unspecified “instrument” – that have been used thousands of times before by other practitioners of the same area, with increasingly ho-hum results. However, I have come to trust Gerard pretty much throughout the recent past. His method cancels the ego completely, privileging the macrocosmic aspects of an introspective solitude. Accordingly, the work manages to involve to a point of complete participation “inside” the rarefied messages coming from the speakers. Despite the absence of surprises, this record is characterized by a wealth of recondite signals – wrapped in an awful lot of implicit meanings – transforming the hush that follows the end of the album into a deafening dearth of questions, as if all what we needed to know was already printed somewhere in the countryside’s scents.
Mathieu Ruhlmann & Banks Bailey / ANÁÁDIIH
Navajos were able to measure the months by the phases of the moon.
The Moon is referred to as “waning” when, in the northern hemisphere, the right side is dark and the light part is shrinking, when it is moving towards a new moon.
The phase in which the moon is “disappearing again” is called Waning Crescent or Anáádiih in Navajo’s language.
Navajo’s culture, habits and beliefs were profoundly attached to the natural environment, and the presence of “solemn” rituals in their culture was accompanied by a mystic relation with the nature in all its forms: animals, plants, water, light, wind, and every natural phenomenon known by them.
“Anáádiih” is also a sound work by Mathieu Ruhlmann & Banks Bailey released by the label 3LEAVES, inspired by a Native American Navajo writing.
The two artists have assembled a sonic collage of rare beauty and effectiveness. Using only concrete sounds and field recordings they’ve gathered all the colors and nuances of the Navajo’s beloved nature.
With its running time clocking in just below 40min, “Anáádiih” is a perfect condensed journey of sonic events. Unlike some other field recording based compositions, in this work there is a concrete and constant sense of motion, as if we were traveling across mountains and canyons, experiencing the heat of the day or feeling the strong wind in our faces, living in complete symbiosis with the nature and feeling ourselves alive for being part of such complex and somewhat mysterious system.
The audio material here presented is a multilayered composition that consists of various overlapped recordings that allow the listener to become highly involved with the sense of space and time. In fact the attention rapidly shifts from what we can consider “environmental recordings”, in which the sense of space is present by definition, to amplified sounds of “objects, gestures and materials” that recreate to our ears the sense of being really close to the audio source. This constant dilatation / contraction of the distances, makes way for another particular, maybe subtler feeling, the feeling of experiencing the pace of time. Day, night, and day again, season after season, year after year.
Time has passed, everything has changed: cultures, landscapes, beliefs.
But “Anáádiih” seems to tell us: “Just listen”.
The Navajo’s moon is still there.
BARGES & FLOWS / CONNECTION
Two dramatically different approaches to field recordings-based soundsculpting are captured on these CD-R releases from the 3LEAVES imprint (both available in 100-copy totals and presented in the attractive Arigato format): the “purer” one of the two, Barges & Flows, is by label overseer Ákos Garai, and the second, Simon Whetham's Connection, weaves its field recording elements into a striking long-form composition of arresting musical character.
Garai's unprocessed field recordings document sounds collected along the Danube River during the autumn of 2010 in Budapest, Hungary. His recording immediately corrects any thought that there might be little sonic activity in play during even the earliest hours of the day, as the air is filled with the rhythmic creak and groan of moored ships rocking against the docks and water splashing against the heaving vessels' sides. The scrapes and groans of the ships at times seem almost violent as they convey the immense weight of the boats. Burbling water, garbled voices, and the hum and clatter of nearby traffic intermingle to form detailed sound paintings that bring the locale to life in aural form, and lest anyone doubt the musical dimension of such source material, the eight minutes of to-and-fro creaks heard during “U-10134-30” suggest nothing less than the primitive, high-pitched sawing of a novice cello player. A comprehensive portrait of the geographical area emerges over the course of the recording's forty-four minutes, with the six tracks documenting different settings along the river. Some areas appear congested with people, ships, and traffic noises, while others seem almost devoid of human activity altogether, the primary sound the rusty song of a single ship. As one listens to Barges & Flows, a clear contrast comes into focus (during the closing piece most directly in its pairing of bridge-related noises and splashing water) as the recording spotlights both the industrial sounds associated with human production and activity and the unadulterated nature sounds that exist in a realm unto themselves and do so regardless of whether humans are present or not.
Whetham's Connection, which draws upon sounds collected during a visit to Prague, effectively documents the artful way in which the producer weaves materials into a grand compositional design. Listening to the thirty-nine-minute piece, the image forms of Whetham reviewing and then selecting from the materials at hand, and then sequencing and arranging them into a piece that satisfies as both a field recordings-based work and as a musical composition that just happens to include within it a predominant number of real-world samples—in short, Connection presents Whetham as more full-fledged composer than sound diarist intent on capturing a literal transcription of a geographical locale, a difference that becomes all the more evident as the work escalates in intensity during its final five minutes. After a rather unassuming setting of low-level clinks and emissions initiates the piece, the material gradually grows in detail and stature via the gradual accumulation of natural, industrial, and interspersed musical sounds. Episodes quickly follow one after the other, with the listener exposed to an understated flow of whooshing winds, electrical tones, mechanical train noises, bird chirps, and industrial rumble with moments of silence occasionally providing rest stops. Though there are moments when associative aspects of the city appear (bell sounds, for example), the final result is less a specific portrait of Prague and more one that alludes to it by severing literal ties to the city through the creative manipulation of the source materials. That the recording is less literally an evocation of Prague doesn't make it less satisfying, however, as loosening that bond allows the piece to be experienced as a more open-ended work that can be experienced at the level of pure sound.
Mathieu Ruhlmann & Banks Bailey / ANÁÁDIIH
Inside an elaborate chip-board outsize wallet is housed Mathieu Ruhlmann‘s latest endeavour of subtlety "Anáádiih" (3LEAVES 3L006), a 40-minute meditation in six parts which contemplates the beauties of the forest, plant life, the skies and mountain-dwelling with an enraptured awe. Banks Bailey is co-credited with producing these recordings, which to my ears seem to include many choice fragments and selections from nature’s bounty – insects, birds, horses, fire, water, weather and air, and certain unseen activities that might cause the bark of an elm to creak in sympathy. There are at least two layers of recording in motion at any one time, and sumptuous overlaid beauties emerge like multiple exposure photographs. Our Hungarian friend Ákos Garai did the mastering for his 3LEAVES label on this, one of the clearest and most straightforward things I have heard from Ruhlmann’s catalogue (he can sometimes indulge in opaque murk and metaphysical conjecture). Comes with a tipped-in colour cover and a printed insert, and a paper band around the package. Arrived from British Columbia, home of the huge wooden log, on 04 April.
Ákos Garai / BARGES & FLOWS
"Songs of the river: Stunning confluences of chance and patience."
If, as Helmut Neidhardt of [multer] once suggested, the ocean is „the world's biggest drone musician“, then perhaps rivers are the planet's most inventive sound artists, moulding and bending water into a cornucopia of timbral variations and rhythmical patterns. To an artist like Ákos Garai, whose oeuvre inherently deals with the relationships and feedback processes between pure field recordings and carefully sculpted composition - his previous full-length Pilis, taped in a sacred mountainside in his native Hungary documented a mysterious inner journey through their spiritual intersection - the Danube must therefore by default constitute not just one of the world's historical, ecological, economical and cultural jugulars, but a creative lifeline as well. Along its almost three thousand kilometers, it both connects and, as a natural border, separates ten countries, growing from the confluence of two tiny streams into a panoramic waterway and offering a plethora of sonic impressions ranging from the pastoral and intimate to the industrial. Garai wasn't the only one to be impressed: In 2008, Australian composer Annea Lockwood released A Soundmap of the Danube and to this day, this triple-CD-set of acoustic impressions has remained the most extensive and in-depth portrait ever presented on the subject. And yet, Garai's Barges & Flows is never indebted to Lockwood's cross-breed between radio play and organic soundscape. Rather, it complements, comments on and occasionally counterpoints her perspective, further enriching an already colourful panopticum.
The main difference between the two approaches consists in their conceptual departure points. Lockwood, after all, regarded the Danube foremost as a cultural symbiosis between a natural resource and the people living along its shores. To her, this symbiosis expressed itself in the fine gradations of dialect and vocabulary of the manifold languages spoken on its trajectory from Germany to the Ukraine as well as the endless stories amassed through the centuries, from its days as an outer fortification of the Roman empire up until the 21st century. To Garai, on the other hand, the Danube is less a conjurer of stories, but a muse of song. His focal point is less on socio-political aspects, but pointed at the cohabitation between the river, as a biological habitat and natural reserve, and the ships and boats ploughing its waves. If there is a narrative to be sought here, it is to be found in the specialised constructions of these barges, gradually adapted to the Danube's particular qualities, as well as at its harbour sites, where the conflict between man and machine, between ecology and economics is brought to an acme. And if there's music in these conflicts, then its melodies are developed by heavy hulks of rusty steel, wind-torn riggings and the splashing of water along the ships' bodies, fascinatingly transformative metrums determined by the slight irregularities and subtle variations in wind strength and ship speed. And so Garai took to „areas filled with people and ships on a daily basis“ and „others only visited occasionally or never at all“ to record this symphony of nautical folk as an homage and analysis – and perhaps as a personal document of the sonic landscape influencing his personality as well.
The field recordings gathered from these trips are anything but the kind of sweetly bubbling and gently gurgling water sounds one has come to expect of similar endeavours. Quite on the contrary, Barges & Flows lends a particular ear to the noisy and the scraping, to the wildly fluttering and flapping, to the sudden outbursts, the momentous momentary releases of energy as well as the seminal silences following in their wake. At the same time, there is a degree of clarity and a love for the microscopic character traits of each location, as though these were acoustic portraits of the barges captured on them. The sheer musicality of the result is astounding. On one occasion, Garai documents an eight-minute long monody of rusty harmonics, a shifting trail of intervals coalescing into an endless theme. On another, he listens breathlessly, as the waterplay against a backdrop of crackling micro-noise textures creates a quiet oasis. In the background, one can clearly hear the surrounding environmental noises, including the din of distant cars, conversations of passers-by, bird song as well as the ceaseless hum of civilisation – clearly, the songs of the barges don't just submissively blend into the scenery, but urgently demand attention, both charming their audience with delicate arrangements and tearing at their nerves. But as one listens one's way through the album, it is becoming increasingly clear that these sonic signals are actually not intrusive, but constitute an integral and grown part of the Danube's organism - for better and worse, they belong together.
To drive his point home, Garai has gone for the moments when the confluence of chance and patience yields spinetinglingly stunning results. Already the first few seconds of the album, unfolding in front of the listener like the opening sequence of a movie, express its intent of communicating not just raw data but sonic events of poetic import: Water sounds slowly fade in, gradually enriched by dripping noises and the hiss of a close by motorway. Then human voices reach the ear and, finally, the heaving and sighing of the first barge – one has arrived at the heart of the narrative. The fifth episode, meanwhile, takes on the traits of a minutely constructed work of sound art, with rhythmical, chromatic and melodic impulses lovingly strewn across the canvas and a continuous ebb and flow of events creating a sense of what someone like Schoenberg might have called „developing variation“: The building of complex compositions from a tiny set of motives. On closing „U-10241-30 (2)“ (not much poetry in the highly functional track titles, admittedly), Garai hits his pinnacle: For eight and a half minutes, he catches what are presumably car wheels driving over a bridge made of metal rods, creating a grid of forever changing rhythmical patter. No drum machine in the world could have been programed with such a sequence and Garai carefully builds it into a spellbinding and hypnotic track. Towards the end, suddenly, tidal activity picks up, the carwheel-groove segueing with liquid splashings until, almost like a percussionist striking the timpani in a symphonic finale, three expressive thumps seem to suggest a natural conclusion.
Of course, Garai is never just a passive spectator here and it is his selection process which turns Barges & Flows into an immersive and cohesive experience. Still, his approach is neither academic nor particularly complicated: „I find a place and set up my recording equipment“, as he dryly explains in the liner notes. There is no hidden magic here: When you're dealing with the world's most inventive sound artist, all you have to do is record and listen.
Mathieu Ruhlmann & Banks Bailey / ANÁÁDIIH
Though 3LEAVES has issued a number of worthy field recordings-based releases to date, this latest one, a collaborative effort between Mathieu Ruhlmann and Banks Bailey that's available in a run of 100 numbered CD-R copies, is the first we've able to squeeze into our pages—a wrong finally righted. Based in Tucson, Arizona, Bailey is a sound recordist who collects material from remote wilderness areas within the southwestern deserts and mountains of the United States. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Ruhlmann is a sound artist whose works have appeared on numerous labels as well as several compilations. The collaborators take their inspiration for the project from Native American Navajo writing, with the Anáádiih title itself a Navajo word that describes the phase of the moon disappearing. Not surprisingly, all of the sounds are nature-based and industrial environments are conspicuously absent.
Some of the standard outdoors sounds appear—birds chirping, the relentless churn of a river's flow, the rumble and rustle of wind, fire crackle, rain drizzle, the amplified clomp of someone walking through fields—but even when they do, they nevertheless strengthen the sense of place established by the album's material. That's helped by the sometimes exotic bird sounds that emerge—in the opening piece, “With Pollen / Beautiful in His Voice,” the unidentified call is so loud it verges on threatening—as well as the whinny of a horse and the anguished cries of coyotes. Track titles such as “Cactus Spine / The Trail Marked With” and “Where the Blue Kethawns Are / There I Return” strengthen the sense of immersion within the natural world that the project cultivates. Of course, things are not exactly as they might seem. The sound materials have not only been collected but also arranged, such that, even if a given piece simulates an undoctored field recording of a specific time and place, it's more likely the case that it's been stitched together from multiple parts gathered at different locales and times. Certainly the elements have been assembled in such a meticulous way that the illusion is maintained convincingly. That's never more the case than when ripples of thunder make the animals grow increasingly agitated during “This Very Day / Your Spell For Me / You Will Take Out.” The work is also presented in very appealing manner, with the CD housed in a tall cardboard case and the disc itself made to look like a 45 vinyl single.
John Kannenberg / A SOUND MAP OF THE EGYPTIAN MUSEUM, CAIRO
A Sound Map of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo is an hour long journey through Egypt’s grandest museum, an institution in the heart of downtown Cairo filled with some of the most important artifacts of world heritage ever assembled under one roof, ranging from objects like the five millennia-old Palette of King Narmer to the New Kingdom golden funerary mask of King Tutankhamun.
Meticulously edited from over eight hours of field recordings made on site at the museum in the spring of 2010, the composition takes listeners on an impossible journey through the museum’s senescent galleries, presenting a series of sonic objects many visitors might otherwise miss: the almost liquid reverb of the museum’s grand atrium, the hiss and rumble of the ventilation system that pumps controlled air into the chambers where the royal mummies lie, the buzz and crackle of aging fluorescent lights about to extinguish themselves, the bangs and rattles of carpenters making spot repairs to the galleries, and the laughter of museum employees gathered for a break to watch a local sitcom on a mobile phone.
With ongoing plans to move the contents of the Egyptian Museum to the new Grand Egyptian Museum building located near the Giza plateau, the soundscape of this century-old current museum has in recent years been destined for change. Yet even before this relocation could take place, the political revolution in Cairo during January and February of 2011 left an indelible mark on the Egyptian Museum’s sonic identity. Tahrir Square, the nexus of the revolution, is located just a block away from the museum. During the protests, a gang of looters used the growing unrest to their advantage and broke in to the museum, somehow managing to evade the human chain of brave citizens who formed a protective wall around the outside of the building. The looters stole or damaged over fifty objects, many of which are still missing. This breach of the museum’s security leaves a physical and sonic rupture, a blemish on the collection and its audience that may never heal.
A Sound Map of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo collects and preserves the pre-revolution soundscape of one of the world’s greatest museums, a sonic relic blending the sounds of contemporary Cairo with the resonance of some of Egypt’s most famous ancient objects. The CD comes packaged with a booklet containing an essay by the composer as well as an annotated visual map illustrating the time code locations of the sound objects collected in the piece.
Mathieu Ruhlmann & Banks Bailey / ANÁÁDIIH
Anáádiih is the first collaboration between these two dedicated phonographers, consisting of six layered tracks for a total of forty minutes of immersive sound. The sounds in question consist of what was an ongoing additive process in which recordings from Arizona – courtesy of Bailey – were woven into/with recordings from BC – courtesy of Ruhlmann. I'm sure the two had an equal part in the process, but to me, the style sounds all Ruhlmann. Bailey's past albums, including the fairly recent – and fantastic – Upwelling on Mystery Sea, is consistent more so with the obfuscated field recording and dark ambient work of friend, collaborator, and contemporary, Ian Holloway – stemming from the Lustmord/Köner axis. Anáádiih, on the other hand, like Rhulmann's previous work, isn't hiding anything. These are straight field recordings, thoughtfully layered and arranged.
Anáádiih is teeming with life.
This album feels like a trek along an endless foothill of sound, along the way presenting animal calls, weather, and unnameable pockets of rustling activity. The strongest moments are when the tactile elements are layered with the sounds of animal life, and on several occasions – especially when the distant cries of wolves or birds of prey can be heard – are executed with utmost aplomb. I'll offer a piece of criticism that's becoming a bit of a blanket statement of mine for a lot of work in this genre, in that I would have liked to have seen more of an overall arc or sense of movement in the compositions. It becomes easy to focus only on individual sounds and how they work together in a track, but to forget the purpose of these sounds and the direction one has decided to take them.
Though still useful, maybe the above critique is perhaps irrelevant in this instance as I am still able to grasp, what I think is, the underlying idea at the album's conclusion. Personally, I hear Anáádiih as a cross section of an old growth tree, as if each tree ring captured the sound of a year of life in the wild, and these two artists were somehow able to tap into and unravel the history steeped within those rings. I believe Bailey and Ruhlmann set out to create an aural picture, a framing of the timelessness of sound as channeled through their own reconstructions of that sound. An anonymous Navajo poem in the liner notes helps to convey thoughts and ideas through an understanding of nature as a precious thing, and these sounds reflect that eternal idea. Edition of 100. Exquisitely packaged.
Interview with Mark Peter Wright
We're living in a material world, and yet our lives are constantly influenced by intangible forces. In 2006, on the first of what would become a series of field recording trips to the North East coast of England, London-based Mark Peter Wright was captivated by the grace and fluidity with which birds would make use of invisible thermals to sail through the air. Although wind, he suddenly realised, could not be seen, it nonetheless powerfully manifested itself in its interaction with the world around it. There was a philosophical side to the reflections which befell Wright that day, but most of all, unsurprisingly for a sound artist, there was a sonic aspect: The tempestuous winds of these regions made themselves heard by breaking at the dunes, roaring through the branches of trees and even by washing round the ears of those taking the trip out there to listen to them. It proved to be a decisive moment, for it would initiate a project entitled Inanimate Life, which was to become an audio catalogue of the coastal region and would continue to fascinate Wright until the present day. Part of this fascination originates in his longstanding interest in the all-important instances for any field recorder when one's own body seems to disappear and to merge with the environment like a drop of water falling into the ocean and one can literally feel the workings of the neverending cycle of life. It is a moment when it is becoming hard to say if one's senses really belong to one's own nervous system or whether they are, in fact, part of a far bigger, collective organism – and where exactly the border between the two is running. Clearly, it seems to relate to experiences, which many would describe as „spiritual“ and which congenially fit into the oeuvre of an artist who was awarded the British Composer of the Year Award distinction on the strength of his work A Quiet Reverie, which dealt with the spatial and architectural aspects of four ruined abbeys (again in North East England) – a firm insider tip among fans of drones, dark ambient and sound art alike. And yet, Wright emphasises that his quest always begins right here on earth and is directed at the unique qualities of a very particular place. Which is not to say that there is an intriguing kind of mystery to the sounds collected on Inanimate Life. After all, even an entirely material world is continuously enriched by the underlying influence of intangible forces.
The North East coast of England seems to be an alluring place in sonic terms.
The majority of the tracks are from that area but there are also recordings from other places including Herefordshire, Manchester and Poland. Many of the sounds presented are rich in natural timbre, depth and resonance. I am drawn to unorthodox structures and chance patterns that naturally sounding elements produce. One of the aesthetically ‘alluring’ things about these sounds is their inconspicuous nature. You walk past these ‘sound events’ everyday without noticing or paying much attention, but when you start listening to an environment attentively, these imperceptible elements suddenly start jumping out all around you. I grew up in the North East of England, so I am sure in some way it’s alluring for me to return and experience the things I walked past without noticing during childhood.
Would you say that the aim of the project is to provide listeners with a reference frame, so they can make up a catalogue of their own?
Absolutely. All I’m offering is 50% of the work, it’s really up to a listener to engage with that other 50%, to bring their experiences and listen. The tracks are not listed in numerical order so the listener has aural and imaginary autonomy on what they want to, or think they’re hearing. The catalogue really is an invitation to listen, to browse and settle on something you find interesting and to move on - if this auditory awareness carries through into everyday life then great, all the better.
You once mentioned that ‘you have to wait, gradually the environment comes back in and you become part of it’.
As far as I can recollect the project started with a personal experience of time passing. Dwelling, standing still - in this scenario things unfold around you, you become sensate, aware. Some of the recordings came from hours of listening in one place, but only two minutes of that is what I wanted to present. Time and change seem to be connected to place. Movement suggests change, but in this instance, by staying in one place, I really grasped a sense of change and of time passing. There’s one particular recording that did not make it onto this publication that I vividly remember. I was recording marram grass amongst howling sand dunes and a pulverizing coastal wind. I was totally transfixed whilst listening and when I finished I could barely move. I’m not sure how much time had passed but I became really aware that the act of listening, and the environment had imposed a type of physicality onto my body.
What kind of conclusions did you draw from these sensations?
In fact, I have arrived at more questions than conclusions! The marram grass experience keeps coming back to me, maybe the recording never made it onto the CD because it could not live up to my actual physical and mental experience of the event itself. I am not sure if this is a conclusion but it’s certainly opening other doors to what is essentially the same room of investigation. I want to explore listening in all its potential, from the object/phenomena of sound itself to the experiential, corporeal, and intertextual ways in which we listen to the world around us.
Does spirituality play into this?
Spirituality does not inform my work directly. A previous work, A Quiet Reverie was an exploration of four ruined abbeys, clearly these are places of spirituality but I was more interested in the use of silence within this belief system. Silence was part of a monastic daily ritual, actively observed with monks communicating through hand signals and gesture. For me this is another interesting allusion to the fact that listening does not have to be communicated through sound alone. Overall my work is informed by conceptual and site-specific art histories and is very much an incremental, process-based approach to practice and research. I believe listening can be an affirming, self-conscious, cultural and political act - a platform for social, historical and ecological endeavour. That’s really my starting point. In terms of spirituality influencing environmental sound, from my point of view its influence is more one of genius loci, or ‘spirit of place’. Using sound to capture and induce a sense of place or audible presence.
Part of the intrigue of Inanimate Life was to record something intangible. Why would you want to do that with audio?
I just like to make life difficult for myself really! To capture something as transitory and slippery as sound through a non-visual media is a great challenge. Overall though, my work focuses primarily on conveying the experience of listening rather than delivering a sound object per se. I have always worked with other media alongside sound - photography, film, text and want to continue exploring other inter-textual ways to mediate the experience of listening.
What happens once you take away the corresponding images?
A sound can be a terrifying thing without its visual location. The amount of times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night looking out of the window, trying to locate a sound and being in this heightened state of confusion, the imagination running wild. It would be nice to think some of this comes across in the recordings, a sense of projection and engagement from a listener’s point of view. So, without the image it seems to be more about processing absence, filling in the gaps when perceptual and cognitive support mechanisms are disturbed. I’m talking from the perspective of somebody who has a good level of sight and hearing, so it’s a different experience for every individual.
To you, listening is a durational experience. Does that play into how you'll organise an album?
Many of the longer tracks on the record simply demand more listening time in order gain a fuller understanding of the complexity of sound. The wire fences and trees in particular reveal so much complexity over time. The shorter tracks - between two and three minutes - intend to act as bridges for the longer pieces and to ultimately create a diverse temporal sense of journey for the listener.
As the track listing evolved it became clear that certain pieces I had recorded just did not fit in. There were a lot of domestic sounds that did not make it onto this publication, for example window frames and doors banging in the wind. This was not due to the sound itself, but a consideration of the overall composition of tracks. The only criteria I imposed for selection in this case was how/if a recording contributed to the overall journey of the listener.
Next to your work in the field, you're also maintaining the ‘Ear room’ interview site. What are you finding out about sound by talking about it?
With Ear Room I want to create a space where discussions can take place and an archive can be built for others to engage with. The fundamental idea is that anybody with an interest in exploring sound can access a whole catalogue of voices, all under ‘one roof’. I’m lucky to have met and been in conversation with some truly fascinating people, and hope their contributions can evolve discussions of how we talk about sound, what vocabulary exists and what can be built. One of the strongest points of revelation to arrive from Ear Room is the complex philosophical, social, cultural, political and ecological borders that sound constantly spills between and disturbs.
Two new releases on 3LEAVES
The first thing to say about these two new releases on 3LEAVES is that they look great! Packaged in environmentally friendly brown card slipcases, complete with obi and a photographic print attached to the front. This attention to detail is also present in the choices the label has made in terms of the material it issues.
I have to say that the write up on the 3LEAVES website for the CD by Mathieu & Banks doesn't (for me anyway) capture what one will find on this release & that is why I haven't included that here. My advice would be to buy it & lets it's sounds capture your attention without referring back to those words. Here we have both straight field recordings & the sounds created by the artist from natural objects. This is music of detail & whilst the pieces occasionally become very active indeed there is always a sense of space & forward movement. I confess that the hydrophone recordings of water born insects & plant life sound like they were recorded with the hydrophones I make (correct me if i'm wrong) & if so then it's great to hear them put to such use.
This music sounds like ones ears have been placed on the living ground, twigs pushed aside & leaves crumpled by ones breath. All around nature is moving, waiting & speaking not to the human but amongst itself & we are listening in on some form of bio-acoustic radio signal, complete with static. A disc well worth checking out - but grab it fast as there's only 100 of them out there !
Next up we have a new CD of work by the labels owner, Akos Garai which focuses on untreated field recordings of, as the title suggests, barges & river flows. Capturing these types of sounds is a well documented area these days. I have 35 CD's on my shelves by different artists featuring the creaks & groans of barges, jetties & other structures floatings on rivers & lakes. However, what is interesting is the way the sheer number of discs featuring these sounds illustrate that even though they all use unprocessed field recordings it is in the choices made by the artist involved that the success of the release is decided. I'd guess that around half of those discs are 'ok' - more documentary than anything else & of the others there are only a handful that really stand out. So far, I think this one by Akos can be added to that handful. When I made my first jetty recordings back in the 1990's I was fascinated by the range of sounds & the way things moved from incredible subtly to ear-pounding force. I would listen for hours to a single structure & become transfixed by its voices. The way Akos has put this CD together, by recording in autumn 2010 & deciding on the choices by October does manage to capture something of a sense of his immediate fascination with these sounds. I think with sound worlds that have been well explored it's always best to keep things simple, as if saying '& this is what my ears liked, simply presented to you'
I'm glad to have this cd & to add it to the handful of dics in this area that I will listen to many times. Again, I recommend you get hold of this pronto - 100 copies only!
Mark Peter Wright / Interview for Soundscaping
You’ve written (inside the CD) that this record was made in costal conditions, with blustery sea winds. How did you record the sounds on the record without the wind taking all the acoustic space?
The work was initially ‘conceived’ in a blustery environment along the North East coast of England in 2006. I can vividly remember watching Kittiwakes for some time as their bodies were subtly moved and repositioned in flight by gusts and thermals of air. So this experience was the catalyst, the moment when I started to think about the interaction between wind and objects. The recordings are not exclusive to coastal scenarios and contain both rural and urban elements.
In terms of the actual sounds, I wanted to focus the recordings on the object itself rather than the wind, to isolate and amplify these supposedly mute physical bodies. Without going into technical details the majority of the recordings were made with contact microphones, as is often the case with this type of work.
What do you do between pressing stop and the finished master tape?
These tracks have been fermenting for a long time now, the whole process is totally ongoing and part of a wider body of research so I don’t feel ‘stop’ really applies. This particular work is very archival by nature so what happened prior to the physical publication was more curatorial from my point of view. Which tracks should be on this disc? Should it be themed i.e. urban environments? What additional information or ‘metadata’ should be included? There was also a lot of collaboration between Ákos Garai (label owner) and myself over the design and layout, even aspects such as the time of release being autumn, all these details from my point of view were very important.
Your work ‘A Quiet Reverie’, reviewed on Soundscaping, contains a booklet of quiet a few pages. A lot more than your ordinary CD booklet. Could you explain what role ‘metadata’ has for your releases?
I find this side of the work very interesting. The additional information you add to a piece can make such a difference to how it’s experienced and understood. With this release it was very much about reduction. I wanted to strip away the layers of associative data and context and present these recordings on the threshold of existence, their traces and provenance being more of an enigma. These additional layers or skins of contextual data are becoming more and more fascinating from my point of view so I’m also working towards isolating and presenting these skins without the physical recording. I guess it’s like taking a pea out of its shell, what does the shell tell you in isolation?
Listening to the record without reading about what you’ve recorded, I’ve primarily imagined an industrial landscape, or an underwater recording. Are you surprised?
I like that reaction as I really wanted to play with the idea of ‘ambiguity’ in sound and listening – how it can be elusive, confusing and transformative. This is also why I chose not to display the tracks in numerical order within the CD notes. It’s not a prescriptive work which I realise can be demanding, but that’s the point – to hand aural and imaginary autonomy over to the listener.
The title "Inanimate Life" – what does it mean?
Physical bodies being tickled and teased, pushed and pulled, ripped and torn – sound and listening as both embodied and disembodied experience.
When working with a piece of recording how much pre-designed structure do you impose on the recording, how much is “flair”?
I think more and more I’m trying to disappear, to take myself out of the work. Anybody who deals with environmental sound will I’m sure have had the feeling of being a small drop in the ocean at some point. I really wanted to explore this here – I’m aware that I press record, I choose the subject but after that, there is no manipulation or composing on my part. If you go into an environment thinking you can control it, particularly amongst nature – you’ll be eaten alive! It’s a fine balance but as much as practically possible I wanted to remove my own compositional hand from this process; the structuring comes from the listener.
Do you have a catalogue of recordings waiting to be made into a record?
This work has been going on for some time and continues to develop. So recordings that were not quite right for this volume will almost certainly be used for the next. I am constantly recording as part of my process, and so have naturally built a fairly substantial archive. Even if I’m just dictaphoning some thoughts and ideas, I think it’s important to be versatile with the medium and use it throughout the process.
What ideas inspire your recordings?
Big question. Ideas are slippery beasts. I’m interested in the process between idea and form, the space that exists between the two. It’s difficult to talk about one or a bunch of ideas influencing my output as I view my work as a fluid endeavor that finds incremental resting points through sound, image and text. Listening and the environment are fundamental to my work so I suppose that is my starting point, from there anything can happen.
Which spots inspire you to record?
I don’t really have a criteria for selecting specific locations. I am interested in context and documentation, playing with both, extracting some elemental quality from a place, whether it’s exotic or mundane.
I’m very aware that a place can contain a sense of presence or character, so in some ways I suppose I’m trying to amplify the experiential qualities of space through the act of listening. It’s not a romantic endeavor, of being isolated in nature. It’s about confronting the unknown, unveiling absence in all its traumatic vitality.
Do you somehow have the listener in mind when making your work, and if so, how is this expressed?
The work wouldn’t exist without the listener so yes, listening is fundamental, whether it’s mine or somebody else’s’ experience. I suppose if I’m out recording it’s more directly about my own experience at that point in time. The important thing for me is that listening goes way beyond the medium of sound, it’s a multi sensory experience, so in the case of a CD publication listening includes opening up the CD, touching the packaging, reading the words – there are lots of ways to listen, for me that’s an exciting revelation!
Soundscaping would like to recommend you to listen to Mark Peter Wright’s “Inanimate Life”, out on 3LEAVES.
Mark Peter Wright / INANIMATE LIFE (a catalogue)
I like making field recordings, recording and archiving a moment in time, to travel back to while listening to it on some later day. The field recordings Mark Peter Wright made for his album Inanimate Life are not the same though. They take the listener a little closer to their sources.
Mark Peter Wright made his field recordings along the North East coast of England, inspired by the voice of the coastal winds. Other than what you might expect from field recordings, it is never really clear what I am listening to. While listening to Inanimate Life on my headphones the sounds rumble through my head, evoking images in my mind of what might be the source of those haunting soundscapes.
For every listener the experience will be different, as these images are triggered inside your own frame of reference. If I close my eyes I see fields of heather, trees blowing in the wind, and it feels like I am inside of them, like for a moment I am that branch, bouncing in the wind. The sounds I hear seem strange but organic.
The album comes in a nicely designed hand-numbered package (mine was 26 out of 150), including a business-card-size mini-CD containing a short piece of commentary by the artist. The names of the tracks are intentionally not numbered, inviting the listener to make his own assumptions.
Inanimate Life “features some of natures most complex and vibrant audial worlds; including the creaking roots of wind blasted heather, the playful gusts that animate giant oak trees and the wailing drones that resonate along wired fencing.”
Mark Peter Wright / INANIMATE LIFE (a catalogue)
Inanimate Life is the new release from London based sound artist Mark Peter Wright. The release contains a collection of field recordings made from late 2007 to early 2010 recorded on the North East coast of England…
For a long time I’ve found the art of field recording extremely interesting and it seems that more and more artists are embracing the natural sound of the world and presenting it effectively ‘as is’. Field recording enthusiasts will no doubt be familiar with the work of Chris Watson, whose nature recordings find themselves all over a fair few Touch Records releases. Watson’s recordings are made during his travels of the globe and whilst listening to one of these marvelous releases the listener can be transported from Scotland to Kenya and back again in a total of about 7 minutes.
To this extent it’s true that the art of field recording becomes most exciting when the artist succeeds to transport their listener into an unknown place and present them with sounds they have yet to, or possibly will never hear. It’s about capturing that unheard rare event and presenting it in all of its naked glory. This is true for Inanimate Life where Mark presents a wonderful collection of field recordings that take the listener to the North Eastern coasts of Great Britain where they experience a sound world that perhaps they would not have the thrill of experiencing for themselves.
At very first glance, Inanimate Life does seem to be a documentary of the familiar though. A purposefully non-numerical track listing tells of recordings made of wire fences, water fountains and flag poles. On paper these don’t sound to be all that unique but once you listen to these ten tracks I’m confident that you’ll be pleasantly surprised..
That’s because Inanimate Life is a sonic exploration into the affects that wind has upon physical objects in their natural environment. The idea was born during a time when Wright would take trips to the North East coast of England to simply listen; very closely. What is heard then, in the 52 minutes that makes up Inanimate Life, are 10 of these physical objects that are inextricably manipulated by the wind’s presence. A flag poles’ mast slapping about in the wind, the roots of a heather bush straining under the wind’s forceful push and the rhythmic, almost electronic, sound of a barbed wire fence dancing make this an interesting and surprising listen if you really allow yourself to fall into the rhythmic, but haphazard, qualities that the wind achieves so well.
Included in the catalogue is a smaller rectangular CD that holds a short commentary within which Wright discusses the collection and talks his way through the inspiration and a few of the recordings. This is a fantastic addition that adds to the professional quality of the release. The only downside being that I (and I’m sure I’m not alone) have no player that would take this credit card-sized CD. A download code would rectify this situation and is something that could easily be set up on Bandcamp for those who purchase the album.
Inanimate Life really is a wonderful exploration into natural sound that every field recording enthusiast should own. It succeeds in its aim to present the listener with a unique sonic journey that Mark has carefully and lovingly laid out. Perhaps it’s not an album to hear as simple background sound; the collection needs to be understood and appreciated for its intoxicating rhythms and qualities hidden under the surface. Don a decent set of headphones and don’t hesitate to allow yourself to be transported to the windy moor that Mark urges you to discover.
Rod Cooper / ACCEPTING THE MACHINES
The name Rod Cooper, from Australia, sounds like a new one to me. He writes as a press text on the label's website: "The landscape is not a new theme in the arts and music is no exception. No matter what themes an artist uses to draw attention to their work and ideas to the audience, the dominant message is still about the artist." I gather from this that he is someone to work with field recordings and that, perhaps, his music should tell something about himself. There are sounds here recorded in an empty factory shell, his back yard, workshop and studios, his beach house (a well to-do person, I thought) and his approach to sounds is like that of a sculptor, using styrofoam which acts like a resonator. The music he generates from his objects and situations (which are all described with great detail on the cover of the release, and a a business card CD-R provides you with some images) is actually nice, since it hardly sounds like the usual field recording artist. There are lots of looped phrases, industrial and mechanical sounds. Hardly the sort of 'careful' playing of a bunch of rain sounds, or watching the sea wash ashore. Cooper does something else, which leaves more for the listener to imagine. The rumbling of objects, falling to the surface of an empty building, with a strange background noise of other activities happening somewhere in the back of a large empty hall. Cooper seems to be combining the sound of sculptors he made and plays manually with the sound and resonances of large buildings and outdoor spaces (chirping insect backgrounds). Quite an excellent release this one. Lots of imaginative music, making something very much of his own, but also standing in a long term tradition of visual artists making music. Cooper does a refined job and sounds a like a name to watch out for in the future.
Lasse-Marc Riek / HABITATS
Der 1975 in Bad Segeberg geborene Phonograph, Bioakustiker und Materialbildner, in BA bekannt als Gruenrekorder, nimmt einen hier mit in die Wälder und an die Seen Finnlands. In Lappajärvi, Alajärvi, Soini, Österö und Björköby belauschte er die Vogelwelt in ihrem natürlichen Habitat, insektendurchbrummt, windumspielt. Auch wenn, oder gerade weil, er die Klanglandschaften im Heimstudio noch sanft nachbearbeitet, mit sirrendem Gedröhn etwa oder ausgedehnter Stille, ist Landschaft nie etwas, dem man von Außen gegenübersteht, kein Gegenstand. Aber auch keine entmenschte Idylle, Rieks Gastgeber gibt Anweisungen, wie man sich in der Blockhütte zurecht findet, Holz wird beigeschafft, Eimer mit Wasser gefüllt, das Feuer knistert. Man ist mittendrin und Riek gibt dem ringsum hörbar Lebendigen genaue Namen: Bachstelze, Goldammer, Rotkehlchen, Laubsänger, Singdrossel, Schwebfliege, Kiefer, Silbermöve, Samt- und Stockente... Dazu lappt und rumort die Brandung, knarrt und gluckert der Landungssteg, lacht die Möve, singt der Schwan, finkt ein Buch. Mich erinnert das an die Dan-Gibson-Reihe Solitudes - Environmental Sound Experiences: Listen to the Loons... Seascapes... Night on Wilderness Lake. Warum aber nicht selber Spazierenhören? An unguten Tagen macht mich der Soylent Green-Beigeschmack derart bloß noch erinnerter Natur nur morbide. Also, Computer aus, raus aus dem Kokon. Jeden Tag stirbt ein Klang und wir werden auch nicht jünger.
Lasse-Marc Riek / HABITATS
“Habitats” was recorded by Lasse-Marc Riek while in Finland in spring of 2007. The beginning of “Habitats” is narrated by Lasse-Marc. He explains that the record deals with habitats, areas and living spaces. The piece, he continues, researchers the interplay between natural elements on the one hand and passages he had arranged at a later stage. It deals with the directional hearing, a vast array of bird voices and the silence between these sounds.
The recording is divided into short segments of around five minutes, giving the listener enough time to let the ambience sink in and take hold. The formative early sounds in “Habitats” centre around water, a theme that will be the dominant backdrop in the final half of the record.
Already during the first few minutes we are intorduced to the Larus canus, better known as the common gull. The sounds of the different types of birds reflect the different spaces that Lasse-Marc Riek have explored through his recordings. The variation in the types of birds we hear are not only to seek out the ornithologst in the listener, but it more or less defines the atmosphere of that given part of the recording. Being the most clear sound in the recording, the different bird sounds thus rightly so seek out the centre of attention, and when abscent, as in the third part of the record, this absence is quite noticeable; even more so thanks to the annoying sounds of insects that own those few minutes of the “Habitat”.
“Habitat” is not so much a guided path of field recordings, but a path through the sonorities of birds. The intro and outro of the record could have been cut shorter or dropped all together, but all in all the sounds of the Finnish forests during spring time is a most refreshing theme that Lasse-Marc Riek does well in capturing. Even the annoying sound of the hover flies.
Ákos Garai / PILIS
"Games of the mountain: One of the more mysterious albums of this year."
As aesthetically pleasing and thought-provoking as field recordings may be, their public perception is prone to a popular fallacy: Even by minutely documenting your hikes into the countryside and backing them up with a truckload of photographs, sketches and journal-entries, you can never fully recreate the sensory experience. More disturbingly, many of the great musical moments mother nature has in store for us are only rarely susceptible to the minute preparations of a field recorder and have a rare talent of occurring at the very moment the microphone is pointed into the opposite direction – or in none at all. Perhaps it is rightly because his previous output has characterised him as a careful drone-builder with a knack for emotional and precise tone-placement rather than a field-purist, Akos Garai may have an inbuilt sensitivity for putting things right. Over a decade after switching from his former position as an axeman with various Grindcore-bands to his new calling as a Sound Artist, he has arrived at a surprisingly convincing solution to this dilemma – and managed to bridge the regularly quoted divide between field recordings and music while at it.
Indeed, everything about „Pilis" breathes an air of discovery, spontaneity and immediacy. For an artist who has published a mere three solo-full-lengths in seven years' time (this one included), even its production cycle is infused with an unusual sense of urgency, as though the album not only needed to be made, but also wanted to be published as closely to its compositional genesis as possible. And thus, Garai embarked on his trip in April of this year, finished processing, editing, arranging and post-producing the material as early as July and published it only two months later. It is a technique which one could confuse for a maniacal obsession or a carefree urge to take risks without looking back, but which, in reality, turns out to be the utter confidence of not vaguely believing or guessing but knowing that a particular work has turned out just the way you wanted it to. It should be fitting in this context that Garai chose to take care of every aspect of the release himself, providing images and contributing design as well as founding his own label, 3LEAVES, to remain in full control of every single aspect of the music.
What's more, you don't even have to listen to a single second of the album to realise it has turned out his most personal effort to date. When Garai talks of Pilis being a sacred place and of its wondrous mountains and natural habitat“ in the liner notes, he may merely be referring to facts. But when he dotes on the scenery's "beauties of nature, the fresh forest air, and the presence of positive energies“, it is becoming increasingly clear that he has no intention whatsoever of hiding his uncompromising affection and unabashed sentiments for this place. More precisely, „Pilis“ has turned out a confession of love for an environment which looks, feels and sounds as remote from the lights of the big city as could possibly be. The 50-minute work follows the composer, as he gradually descends from the mountain's highest peak down to its foot. As he's walking down, he is passing through various scenes, small spaces filled with colourful variations of the same elements: Rocks, brushwood, grass, trees, stretches of forest, birds and insects. Most importantly, however, there is the ongoing presence of a clear-watered stream, which accompanies the wanderer all the way, like a good friend.
The image of the river is essential to „Pilis“ in several ways. For one, it is the lifeline of the mountains, replenishing its energies and rejuvenating its century-old face, withered and battered by the elements and the gradual force of erosion. Then again, it is a metaphor for the philosophical idea that nothing can ever really repeat itself: As Garai moves forward, he is, in a way, never walking along the shore of the same stream, but observing its continuous metamorphosis. And finally, it is a musical Leitmotif for the album as a whole, reassuringly underpinning these minimalist sonic scenarios. It is the sound of the stream that holds the loose events of the album together, provides them with context and texture, structures their flow and awards them meaning. Some might claim that this essentially simply means that there is an awful lot of water to be heard on this disc. But paying attention to its constantly changing surface, its minute variations and inner dynamics does pay off for anyone with an open ear.
If Garai had decided to simply present his trip without any kind of additions, he might have earned some applause in the scene and that would have been the end of it. Instead, he afterwards decided to complement his recordings with additional layers of electronic processing. These are never of the typical romantic Folk-type or ethereal Ambient-elements. Rather, they act as a conscious contrast with the organic sweetness of the environment: Rumbling, subsonic waves and glitchy micro-ticks, high-pitched, disturbing alarm-bell-like squeals, deep, hollow reverberations like a ghostly combination of chilling wind and the distant drone of airplanes. On the overall scale of the piece, these episodes are few and far between and never particularly long. Occasionally, one doesn't even notice their presence until Garai has taken them all the way to the foreground and exposed their alien nature. And yet, their presence is of seminal importance. One feels like observing bewildering little spectacles, like stumbling upon whims of nature and the spirit of the mountain playing little games to entertain its visitors and itself alike.
One could of course ask what the purpose of these games might be. That, however, would be completely against the intention of the album. Even Garai himself, when looking back to his trip, could not say for sure, „why there and then, when I felt like it, I stopped, sat down and recorded the sounds of the stream and the environment“ - he just did. This is exactly what one experiences as a listener, too: An epic, encharming, quiet and yet sweeping journey through a magical landscape which takes on great plasticity. You never quite know what it all means, but once you've sat down to listen, it is next to impossible to press „stop“ before the music has gently ended on its own accord. It's not just that „Pilis“ is aesthetically pleasing and occasionally thought-provoking. Its multiple layers of perception offer the rare chance of replacing the actual experience with a different, yet equally fresh, one. By refusing to ask questions and by following nothing but his instincts, Ákos Garai has resolved the inherent dilemma of field recordings – and created one of the more mysterious albums of this year.
Ákos Garai / PILIS
Ákos Garai’s work “Pilis” takes us to the mountainous region not far from Budapest by the same name. It received its name from the old Hungarian word for tonsure, that is to say the practice of cutting the hair from the scalp, as Christian monks used to do. Reason for this name was that the mountains were used for growing grapes, and therefore looked like a bald head. Those days are now long gone, and the Pilis is nowadays a lush forest, with streams, hiking trails and wildlife.
One day Ákos was hiking in this beautiful place, and on the descent from the highest peak in Pilis he recorded the sounds that surrounded him. The material recorded during this hike was used as the starting point of this composition. Computer-generated layers were added and in time these layers changed into sonic thoughts, that were inspired by the original field recording and memories from the hike.
The recording itself starts off presenting the sounds of the natural inhabitat of Pilis. We soon come to hear the sound of the stream that Ákos followed down on his path from the mountain top. The theme of water is encapsulating this composition, with Ákos returning to this sound repeatedly throughout his work. The progression from the natural sounds of the Pilis to the computer generated sounds has clearly defined points at the start of the recording. The pace of change from one world to the next slows somewhat down the further we move from the top of the mountain, and the sound of what is man-made and recorded grows in sonic strength.
The power of water is shown both through the way Ákos lets the intensity of the field recording play out towards the end by itself, and through the addition of a deep generated sound. The combination of sounds marks the crescendo of “Pilis”.
The journey we undertake is finely structured and themed. The continuous flow of the stream works well with the context of the composition. All in all “Pilis” is a fine piece of work, one where neither the field nor the layers of manufactured sound dominates.
Adding to the sound is the physical presence of Ákos Garai’s first release on his own label 3LEAVES . “Pilis” comes as an exquisite CD-R. As written on the label’s homepage: “Label releases will be consistent in appearance: 300gr art paper printed digitally in 4+4 colour with inserted CD-R on the sleeve, packaged in tracing-paper or crystal clear sealable PP bag. Writable media is the Japanese Taiyo Yuden brand that is known for highest quality and reliability. Three Leaves releases are hand-numbered and comes out in 150 copies.” Yours truly is the proud owner of number 026. In the age of quick fixes, it is highly appreciated that artists and record companies go an extra step when it comes to presentation.
Soundscaping warmly recommends you to take part the aquatic-laden aural trip that is “Pilis”.