What are the sounds of nature? You think that’s an easy one but then you remember you’ve spent your whole life trying to see what’s in front of your eyes before forgetting to look and replacing what you see with what you’ve learned should be there. It’s harder still for us urbanised folk for whom all contact with nature is mediated in one way or another, before or after the fact. The term “nature” immediately calls up images of pastorals or writhing, quasi-organic forms as seen on the front cover of composer Amy Brandon’s album Lysis (New Focus Recordings). There are eight pieces collected here, mostly short, written between 2018 and 2023, which employ a variety of esoteric techniques to produce music that sounds more excavated than constructed. The album shocks with the opening flute solo microchimerisms, a fleeting vignette in which flautist Sara Constant implausibly hocks up deep aqueous rumbles that evoke the discovery of organisms in a soil sample. The Chartreuse String Trio make threads sound larger than it is, the three instruments drawing upon a wide range of timbres and registers in a piece which exemplifies Brandon’s strange but sophisticated approach to composition. She makes use of microtonality, geometry and rhythmic modulation purely as a means to an end, forgoing any impulse to demonstrate these principles to the listener to focus on producing music that resembles natural phenomena in their manner of operation. Thus threads weaves a counterpoint of irregular, unpitched sounds and complex noises finely differentiated by density and texture, while in the title piece Quatuor Bozzini begin with faint, voiceless string sounds that transform into thick harmonies made of tunings that sound arrived at in the process, rather than decided in advance. Some works definitely use electronics (Intermountainous pits ominous whooshes against Julian Bertino’s retuned 10-string guitar) while others sound like they do, such as the Bozzini’s pairing with Paramirabo and returned keyboards on Tsiyr. Dynamics and intonation are used to ferocious effect, making the music advance and retreat, snapping in and out of focus as though under a zoom lens. The odd one out in this set is the longer and larger Simulacra for cello and orchestra, with soloist Jeffrey Zeigler and Symphony Nova Scotia conducted by Karl Hirzer. The larger forces allow for more dramatic gestures and overt lyricism, but these outbursts are made more effective by sudden, striking gestures whose abruptness and inventiveness make any poignancy feel earned. Brandon’s talent for cutting such moments short also shows her awareness of nature’s indifference in practice.
The Normal Sounds (Moon Glyph) on Lia Kohl’s album aren’t exactly natural but they are real. Each of the seven pop-sized tracks is built out of pairings of field recordings, overlaid with Kohl’s cello and synthesizer ambience. (Ka Baird and Patrick Shiroishi contribute some flute and sax, too.) It has a cool quality throughout, not quite detached, even as it bases each track out of sounds considered at least inadvertent or else straight-up intrusive (alarms, electrical hums); then again, snow sounds are also used, so we can’t really call this a pointed interrogation of modern life. Kohl’s music plays both with and against the found sounds as it best suits her, repurposing for her own needs, leaving the listener to do whatever intellectual work they care to apply in discerning her motives. At times the premise adds more texture than grit, such as occasional distant car horns behind the sax solo (uh huh). Best of all is that the sleeve notes talk about other stuff but never tip you off to the running gag on which the album really is based: Kohl’s choices of keyboard samples and patches are now a greater part of our sonic landscape than the field recordings themselves.
Anthony Vine’s Sound Spring (Kuyin) is a film soundtrack album, but not one that would interest Sony Classical. There is a daxophone, played by Daniel Fishkin, but I don’t think Sound Spring is a horror flick, where this instrument usually seems to find its home. Vine on electric guitar and Fishkin are joined by Maya Bennardo on violin, Will Lang on trombone and Ryan Packard percussion to play along with with field recordings of natural sounds from within, and around the making of, the movie. In its own way, it becomes a reflective documentary, shifting the focus from action on-screen to location and process. As such, the nine tracks do blend into each other in an ambient haze where specific details remain indistinct. Sounds of running water predominate, with faint snippets of conversation occasionally in the background – I feel like this has become something of a trope for audio verité. It is all superbly balanced, with the instruments becoming part of the landscape, playing as much within the natural sounds as over the top of them. I think they should take it as praise that you forget there’s, say, violin and trombone in there.
