Posts Tagged ‘Field Recoording’

Alberto Boccardi – Petra / Alexandra Spence – Blue Waves, Green Waves / PINKCOURTESYPHONE – All Intensive Purposes

Posted: 6 July 2022 in Albums
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ROOM40 – June 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

I feel like I’ m forever playing catchup. The simple fact is, there are more new releases – and remarkably good ones at that – than there are hours in the day to listen to them all. I can’t bee the only one who sees friends on FaceBook posting about how they’re loving the new album by X, Y. and Z, and who gets asked if they’ve head / what they think to this, that, or the other and wonder ‘how the hell do you actually listen to all this?’ These people must listen to music 24/7 and possess three pairs of ears by which to listen to all of this music simultaneously, or something.

Admittedly, it doesn’t help that my dayjob doesn’t really afford much opportunity for listening while I work, so I really only have a spell while cooking dinner, and evening, which, after everything else, tend to start around 10pm.

And so, presented with anything up to thirty new releases a day in my inbox, I simply can’t listen to everything, and I deeply envy those who can, and seemingly do.

One particular source of guilt, for wont of a better word, is my inability to keep up with ROOM40 releases. They may only be number three or four a months, but they’re invariably interesting, exploratory, intriguing. And tend to warrant for more detailed analysis than I can reasonably offer. Hence a summarising catch-up for the label’s June releases, on the day July’s have just landed with me.

Alberto Boccardi’s Petra (released on tape) is a comparatively short album of intense electronic drones: consisting of just five tracks spanning around thirty-two minutes, is sparse, ominous, sonorous, predominantly mid-range but with some stealthy bass and sonorous, trilling organs. Recorded over several years and partly inspired and assembled while Boccardi was resident in Cairo, it’s both chilling and soporific, it’s an intriguing minimal work.

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Blue Waves, Green Waves by Alexandra Spence isn’t receiving a physical release, and is an altogether different proposition. As the tile suggests, the ocean provides the primary inspiration, and sure enough, it begins with the sound of crashing waves, but this soon recedes to the background, while analogue organ sounds ebb and flow as the backdrop to low-key spoken word pieces. Noters drip and drop and hover in suspension like droplets of water hanging from leaves before their inevitable yielding to gravity, sliding off and into a puddle. ‘Air Pockets’ sloshes and sploshes, reverberating against empty plastic pipes. The flatness of sound and the shifting of tones as they bubble and sploosh is the aural equivalent of close reading, interrogating a source to microcosmic levels.

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‘All intensive purposes’ is one of those (many) misspeaks that drive me fucking crackers. And this release by there inexplicably—monikered ‘Pinkcourtesyphone’ is an album likely to frustrate and bend the brain, albeit for different reasons. With the exception of the final mid-album interlude, ‘Out of an Abundance’, these are darkly mellifluous drones that stretch well beyond the five-minute mark, and ebb and flow slowly amidst rumbles and reverberating snippets of conversation and radio. The mood is tense, unsettling; not creepy, so much as just uncomfortable, spine-tingling, ominous, and at times, other-wordly.

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Some will likely find something in one or another of these, while others will doubtless find all three of these releases to be of interest and collectively, they do very much provide a broad, wide-ranging view of matters experimental and ambient, presenting different perspectives of found sound and field recording. It’s credit to ROOM40 for giving space to these artists, and showcasing such a range of music from within what may, on the surface, appear a narrow field, and demonstrating otherwise.

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha – Tunnel Vision

Posted: 6 May 2016 in Albums
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Silo Rumor – May 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Given the ubiquity of music, perhaps now even more than at any time in human history – and music has been an integral part of life for as long as we know, in ever-evolving forms – it’s something that is generally taken for granted. Few consider the function, or functions, of music, and those who do are more often than not academics: the average individual is unlikely to devote a great deal of time to dissecting precisely why they listen to the music they do, or what it is that specifically draws them to music. That said, the more avant-garde and theory-based the art becomes, so more consideration is given to its purpose, and in some respects, this seems somewhat paradoxical given that much of the work in this sphere is not what the majority would necessarily consider ‘music’. And so we have Jonathan Uliel Saldanha’s Tunnel Vision, a collection of pieces recorded in and around the tunnels of Porto. Part field recording collage, part abstract, part ambient soundwork, the album’s seven segments are not overtly musical, in that they do not feature any of the conventional features of ‘music’.

While the concept of ambient music is now well established, and the theories around it also representing well-trodden territory, it’s still worth considering the purpose of an album like this. What kind of experience does it offer the listener? Specifically, what is the point? After all, Tunnel Vision is, ostensibly, little more than drones, moans, hums and thuds with occasional snippets of voices. And if anything, it’s not really ambient: it’s far too tense and unsettling for all that.

‘I’m what some people call The Tunnel. Whereas most are drawn to what’s on the surface, in the skies, or in space, I’m drawn to what’s beneath the surface,” says the anonymous speaker on the tile track. He continues: “Space seems exotic, mysterious, because it’s distant, far away enough not to fear… the underworld is a void that sits right beneath our feet. It evokes fear…” And while Tunnel Vision is concerned broadly with the use of ‘resonant spaces’, the overall mood and texture is very much of the space below than the space above and around. The purpose of this music is to evoke the space which frightens us, which pricks those subconscious fears through the medium of sound. It’s about conjuring the unfamiliar and appealing to the senses in a way which unsettles them by means of the concordance of the rumbling of distant thunder which rolls beneath a shifting soundscape of mournful brass and unexpected clashes of sound.

The three tracks which occupy side two are noticeably longer, than the four on side one, and feel more formed, building on the atmospheres which emerge through the layering of long, low hums and drones, twittering flickers snippets of voices and thuds and clumps.

And so it is that one does not listen to Jonathan Uliel Saldanha’s Tunnel Vision for its musicality, or for entertainment. Nor does one interact with music on this level for relaxation purposes, but instead to confront subconscious and primal fears. To marvel at the mind which could create such sonic challenges, and to feel a sense of discomfort that’s essential to moving out of one’s comfort zone and instead be shaken into feeling something that evokes a response beyond immediate comprehension.

 

Silo Rumor

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha Online