Manja Ristić: lights shimmered like whispers in the depths of the trees; Miska Lamberg: stillness in their isolation; Dylan Kerr: Pas de la Demi-Lune; Michael Pisaro-Liu: anabasis (1) [Sawyer Spaces]. Sawyer Spaces is a sub-label of Sawyer Editions, focused on soundscapes, pretty much: their albums are either field recordings, or make use of field recordings, or are otherwise defined by the particular location in which they were created or recorded. Ristić presents a pair of montages, made up of recordings made around Portugal, Austria and Croatia. There’s a lot of autobiographical and genealogical subtext behind both pieces, but Ristić seeks to convey the meaning through ambience without resorting to allusion or narrative. The open-air sounds are deep and nuanced without being overtly suggestive, which also lets you work out for yourself that you’re hearing a composition and not raw documentation; you feel validated when the instrumental sounds appear. The thing about ambience is that you really need to be in the place itself to be certain you truly feel anything that place has to tell you. With music, the best you can do is take it on trust and sympathise with whatever the musician is trying to convey. Also, any time I heard cicadas I assume it’s a reference to Presque rien. The Lamberg also presents two pieces, or one piece in two movements. The sounds are those of urban ambient hum, the constant nagging drone of traffic and air conditioning (If only! gasps the European audience). Both tracks generate a negative presence through layered industrialised white noise, not pleasant but not actively unpleasant, just intrusive. Lamberg recommends playing it soft (I didn’t) so it presumably works as a compounding, or confounding effect on the noise you’re already dealing with, but I’m not sure if the intended effect is amelioration or alienation. I played both these albums on a sunny afternoon and dozed off to both.
Kerr’s Pas de la Demi-Lune is a different deal; composed for a performance in a cave, and recorded here in a performance in a different cave, this is a straight-up musical piece, albeit one entirely shaped by environment. Kerr plays computer-generated sine tones that build up high, complex harmonics by following lattice processes devised by James Tenney. Transducers are attached to metal bowls and trays, causing them to vibrate and rattle sympathetically with the sine tones. Organ pipes are blown, selected and tuned to the frequencies created from the harmonies generated by the sine tone processes. It’s a rough-sounding work, suitably harsh and craggy for the landscape in which it was created, with interference patterns cutting across organ and sines and bolstered by agitated metalwork. Not the easiest of listening nor the most lucid of sonic phenomena, suggestive of the way nature conceals more than displays the principles upon which it operates. Evocations of rituals aside, what is interesting is the way Kerr uses his methods as a sort of armature for nature, with his instruments acting as a representation of the natural surfaces and features, without the need for analogies.
anabasis (1) was composed by Pisaro-Liu in 2013; this performance was made in London in 2024. It’s a sectional score – 72 parts – for five musicians using materials assigned to four categories: sand, wind, tone and wave. The musicians here (I recognise James Creed and Mia Windsor) use a prepared reed organ, electromagnetic pick-ups, pedals, a fan, microphones, a giant sail, digital processing, various objects and, of course, sand. Is this site-specific? I suppose it is. On the first listen it sounded like documentation of a rather busy performance which you probably needed to be an audience member, if not a performer, to fully appreciate. It’s all a bit wild and woolly, with no conceptual elegance immediately observable as in some other Pisaro-Liu pieces. This can be a strength or a weakness in performance, depending on the musicians, the venue, your mood. The second time I heard it, something clicked. The busyness meant that things kept happening over its 72-minute duration; you’d think you had a feel for how the piece was progressing and then it suddenly takes off in a new direction. The second time, every new angle or development sounded fresh and spontaneous. The second time, I wondered how they were all coming up with so many sounds. The second time, I forgot that it was recorded indoors.
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