Green Field Recordings

Alessio Degani | Cityscape – Brixia

Toni Dimitrov | Bucharest Sketches

by Richard Allen

https://acloserlisten.com/2020/04/30/toni-dimitrov-bucharest-sketches/

There’s no substitute for a good rainstorm, and Toni Dimitrov catches a beauty.  The segment forms a major part of Bucharest Sketches, a tapestry teeming with life.  The soundscape serves as a warm advertisement for Romania, and marks the return of Green Field Recordings after a months-long break.

Before the rain begins, birds squawk up a storm at the beginning of the day; then come children, playing and shouting in the streets, and adults going about their business.  A student mentions a dissertation, but in a way, Bucharest Sketches is a dissertation on its own: a collection of seemingly disparate ideas, organized by sonic paragraphs and sewn together by a collective thread.

The rain enters swiftly, but not suddenly, in the sixth minute.  One can imagine the people scurrying for cover, battling with their umbrellas: but certainly they must have seen it coming!  Motorbikes and cars splatter early puddles and unlucky pedestrians.  The deluge increases, coming down in sheets.  A few people venture outside, then retreat.  Finally the rain subsides; the kids come out to play, shoppers fill the streets, transit picks up, and a ping pong game begins in the park ~ not a very good ping pong game, based on the bounces and laughter, but an enjoyable one.  “Uh oh – urgh!” and then “Woo!”

Returning to the beginning like a sonic arc, Dimitrov reintroduces the birds and closes with  handheld bells.  Those looking for a metaphor about cycles can easily find one here.  In the northern hemisphere, spring is beginning to bloom.  Around the world, parks are reopening.  Bucharest Sketches is not only a portrait of a bustling city, but an advertisement for joy.

Atilio Doreste | Dog in the Cave

by James Catchpole

Dog In The Cave is the first in a new series entitled “Limits and Derives”, and it’s a fascinating entry point for sound-searcher Atilio Doreste. A deep evocation of a close atmosphere, the low clouds sleeping over an exotic panorama and a secluded intimacy in the presence of our surroundings are all felt during the set of field recordings, to such an extent that multiple senses are awakened behind the eyes and activated all at once. It’s possible to imagine the chilled trickle of water, the humidity in the carried air and the rocky terrain under our feet. All of these features are crucial elements to the field recording, and in order for them to be successful this evocation must run deep. Dog In The Cave captures the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands to near-perfection, so vivid is the music of her horizon.

Just off the north-west coast of Africa, you’ll find the sounds inherent to Dog In The Cave. Over the islands, an infinite number of details within details present themselves; flies buzz all a frenzy, creating music where one is all and all is one, sending their dissonance into the air as the rain pours down. The vibe emanating outwards is not immediately of a landscape steeped in stunning beauty, one that is easy to enjoy and admire, but one of clanking drain-pipes and daydreams of day-to day life, as seen inside townships and villages void of tourists, where once-inspired architecture fades to near-ruin.

As listeners, our eyes are blind to the true recorded source, dependent on our inner eye to imagine the location (those flies we can hear actually encircle and approach a dead rabbit.) Doreste is a trusting pathfinder who allows us enough of a vivid view so as to imagine clearly, and it’s enough to destroy the thought of reaching fingers into the dark. Just like the rough terrain, these recordings sneak and jump around the islands, finally resting at a place of unspoilt beauty; a true scent.

In “San Miguel De Abona Camino Real”, drops of rain fall like rhythmical footsteps, advancing with the slow-burning clouds. Thunderclaps roar over a fearful dog’s whine, swirling the atmosphere into an indigo shade under dark skies full of rain. The wind accelerates, charging up an excited electricity and stirring the neck like a high current. El Camino Real itself is the Spanish word for ‘The Royal Road’, or, ‘The King’s Path’.

“Camino Real En Tegueste” introduces native wildlife, as the chirpy cry of birds produce the note-perfect music of the wild. Planes cut through the dark clouds, thrusting over the sky above. This not only counteracts the natural sound of the island, but it also intrudes into the dense, natural sense of peace. Chiming church bells ring out their major melodies amid the Sunday morning chatter; this is a thriving community full of life. Streams carry us along a grassy walkway between desire and desolation, through abandoned corners of overgrown beauty that are absent save for the shouts of inquisitive children. Stabs of a different kind of music drifts in from a radio frequency, and echoes reverberate as if we were inside the cave itself. This area of suburbia, and a wide proportion of the natural land, is full of noise pollution that interacts with the natural and then absorbs into the natural, to create a sonic acceptance in the new sound of the land; a place where true peace only lasts for a second inside the true concrete jungle.

Exotic creatures breathe into your ears in both a warning and a welcome, in a landscape swept with an unpredictable flurry of activity. Existing alongside the concrete chaos lies a foundation of birdsong, a shining light of tranquility centuries old. Pulling aside the foliage, the rustle of the leaves and the grass make way for piercing chains, screaming floors and the throaty growl of a dog, adding a discordant feel; a flipped mirror image to the harmonious song. It’s not a saccharine listen; the Spanish voices re-tell the story of a fatal accident involving a farmer’s wife, who was killed by a bull from his own herd thirty years ago.

“Acantilados De Acentejo” is the ultimate relaxant, where the sound of running water prevails; a perfect February listen for people born under Aquarius. A creek and a croak reveal the wildlife running their course along the breezy banks. It’s easy on the ear, as if we were tuned into Rainy Mood. Up to the shoreline we travel, where the usually serene sound of waves reaching up and caressing the shore now crash over the sides in a jet of white foam. Finally, a hydro helicopter disperses water over a mountain choked with smoke and suffering with fire (“La Atayala”.) A legend points the King’s Path as being the entrance to a cave, thought to be one of the last seclusions of the then king, before the invasion by the Kingdom of Castile. A dog continues to watch the entrance.

Luís Antero & Jay-Dea Lopez | Time Passes

by Flavien Gillié (TFR)

A Day In The Life

Jay-Dea Lopez et Luis Antero artistes sonores et adeptes du field recording sont réunis ici sur un album pour littéralement faire passer le temps, au sens noble du terme, reconstituer une journée, 24 heures, ou plutôt ici 24 minutes, mais ô combien luxuriantes.

Tout est question d’écho, d’unité de lieu, Luis dans son studio Jay-Dea dans la forêt sub-tropicale d’Australie. Chacun va se mettre au service d’un incroyable flux sonore, s’employer à faire foisonnement, réinventer la vie, celle d’une forêt dans un studio,  et pourquoi pas aux antipodes faire de la forêt l’intimité d’un studio.

On oppose souvent, par manque de vocabulaire voire par volonté réductrice, le field recording au studio recording, le dedans et le dehors.

Ici rien n’est opposition, la symbiose est parfaite, bien malin qui saura démêler l’entrelac des nappes et des frottements de mandibules, tout crisse, tout vit, luxuriance et pâmoison d’un temps qui passe sans compter, une journée heureuse en quelque sorte, et si le soir préfigure la mort, alors on veut bien s’y rendre de cette manière, en toute quiétude.

- Translation to English * -

Jay-Dea Lopez and Luis Antero, sound artists and field recording votaries, unite here on an album to litterally pass the time, in the noblest sense of this expression, rebuild a day, 24 hours, or rather here, 24 so lush minutes.

All is about echo, space unity, Luis in his studio, Jay-Dea in some australian subtropical forest. Each is willing to serve an incredible sound flux, involved in creating profusion, reinvent life, the one of a forest in a studio, and why not, at the antipodes, make the forest the intimacy of a studio.

One often opposes, either by lack of vocabulary or by simplistic will, field and studio recordings, the inside and the outside.

Here none is about opposition, symbiosis is perfect, how clever the one how will untangle the tracery of sound layers and mandible frictions, everything scrapes, everything lives, luxuriance and swoon of time passing without mattering, an happy day, in some sort, and if the evening announces death, one is willing to reach it this way, in a peaceful manner.

*by Sismophone

SALA | Unsafe Escape: Apparition London

by Flavien Gillié

In this piece Audrius Simkunas (SALA) tells us the story of a city, a first experience of his trip to London. As an ever growing city he had to fight and felt an almost physical wall of sounds in which he has sought different ways to escape. He has proven us that although the city doesn’t need us to exist, without us to listen, its meaning becomes non-existent.

We imagine the artist visiting the national gallery, holding his steps to watch Turner’s painting “Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway “, giving us his sonorous interpretation of this visual shock.

SALA’s piece evokes a successful stratification, like one can feel when standing in front of an old destroyed house. Open walls showing traces of old forgotten life, wallpapers, rests of staircases, rooms becoming visible on the outside..

The artist plays with some bold contrasts; the city’s belly and its metropolitan tunnels coexist with remote bells, an absorbed cathedral, and birds in a garden evoking the return of calmness, a secret garden, and haven of peace at the end of the day.

We could say that he had to take risks, had to play with exhaustion, as we know how every city is a source of perpetual energy, taking us (not) much further than we imagine, making us forget the need for sleep, everything being lived at the very moment. We will rest when back at the countryside, after the trip, if still existing, where the night is silent and the dark is really dark.

We can feel a certain urgency here, a fear to not be able to discover everything, even though we know it is illusory. To know something we need to live something. The question is if we can really, I mean permanently, keep the same freshness of listening to something for the first time, a renewed wonder?

Audrius Simkunas went for the moment back to Lithuania; we wish him a lot more traveling, more intensive experiences so he can make us feel more of this urban power. One thing is certain; London will never be the same again.

(translation by Mia)

Dallas Simpson | St Livres, Switzerland, Binaural Phonographic Documentary

by Elliot Loe

St Livres, Switzerland, Binaural Phonographic Documentary by Dallas Simpson is a phonographic documentary entirely recorded with binaural in-ear mics that give a personal perspective of the location.

According to Dallas Simpson’s words: “The aim is to capture the sound of the location itself, without using the human voice directly either as narrative or commentary…Movement through the location allows an element of spatial choreography – the composition of movements of sounds in space and placement of sound elements in the 3-D perceptual sound space.”

The term “Spatial Choreography” perfectly represents the core element of this audio work: the location itself collapses within the aural map and the movements of the recordist become the compositional gestures of the sonic portrait.

The space is represented here with a distinctive observational point of view allowing the sound to be fully perceived as the main trait of the location, therefore the idea or the concept of sound is no more “attached” to objects, on the contrary the soundscape becomes a complete “environment” on its own retaining all the materic and visual informations, and mapping them in an aural cloud that just needs to be explored.

As already stated this is a composition made by movements and, being movements naturally bound to space, the perspectives being captured by the recordings maintain a solid and evident link with distances and time, as if space and distance were located inside the visual/concrete domain and their aural counterparts, respectively sound and time, were the main features inside the aural domain.

This is similar to perceive the location as:

Location = spaces & distances + sounds & time

but the “equation” is not completely correct because in order to have the complete definition of a location I would add a third factor which is the presence of the recordist/listener who acts inside a complementary layer/domain that constantly interact with the others two. But it’s definitely true that the location ‘speak for itself’ and recordings like these perfectly summarize the attitude of pure objective documentary recordings.

Darius Ciuta | MINA

by Chris Whitehead

Listening to Darius Ciuta’s sound art can be like waking up in some unknown landscape. You can’t work out how you got there in the first place and there seem to be no signs to guide you. On looking around, you realise that actually you can see for miles. Then you start becoming aware of the details right there under your feet, not things you’d normally notice. A small variation of texture, perhaps an unexpected undulation in the surface of a tiny exposed outcrop. On exploring further, you realise that the place is actually rather interesting, and the things in it have a life of their own. It becomes a deeply fulfilling environment and you become attuned to its peculiar and very hypnotic features. Then the track ends, it’s two in the morning and you have to be up for work the next day, but anyway you need to get back in there where the air is full of tiny floating particles of sound, so you press play again.

Listening to Darius Ciuta’s sound art can be like not going to sleep at all.

Obviously this is all speaking in metaphors, and I believe Ciuta wants these beautiful constructions to exist as and of themselves. He has explained in a recent interview with Fluid-Radio that any visual material allied to his art distracts and misguides the listener.  He says “I am sure that any visualisation – be it textual or graphic – doesn’t complement sound. I would even say that it is a hindrance. It dis-informs and creates confusion”. This also explains the use of acronyms rather than comprehensible titles. Clearly Ciuta is asking us to disarm ourselves of expectation, narrative, context and preconception, and to enter with ears intent on listening clearly and deeply.

Knowing that this is the view of the composer, writing about his sound feels a bit like desecrating it. Whatever happens a reviewer’s comments may sit in the mind of the listener and detract from their personal listening experience. It is impossible to write about ‘MINA’ without explaining some of the features you’ll come across should you download it, so reviewing it could be perceived as going against its author’s wishes.

With this in mind, here’s an interesting exercise: Why not download and listen to ‘MINA’ without reading further, and then compare the rest of this review with your own experience. I’m sure we all come away with different impressions, whatever art we partake of. This is just how I see it.

‘MINA’ is just over an hour in duration, and unlike some of Ciuta’s compositions, it certainly has links to the concrete and tangible. It has seemed in the past that works such as ‘L-C (loop – coil)’ (Impulsive Habitat 2011) or ‘H_CS’ (Echomusic 2012) have somehow spontaneously coalesced from silence. As if the recording apparatus is not there and a memory card or disc has been left in a place to gather material directly from the ether. The creator’s hand is not always apparent (by ‘the creator’ I mean Darius Ciuta, not God).  Focus, restraint and subtlety are key components here.

Recurring features that serve to pin the piece together and give a feeling of cohesion include a creaking element that pretty much punctuates ‘MINA’ throughout. A straining rope perhaps or stressed wood? There is the clink of cutlery against plates, occasional broadcast radio or TV sound, distant and not so distant voices, a restaurant piano, water, sounds from workplaces and birdsong.

It contains many disparate elements skilfully positioned together in a laminar fashion. The layers move over each other like the  layers of water in the ocean, each one of a differing temperature. Several environments coexist, sliding over and under others, yet they never become consumed or engulfed. It appears that everything exists on an equal footing with every other thing. Small sounds are given strong focus and set against backgrounds clearly gleaned from real environments.

Of all the Darius Ciuta compositions I’ve listened to so far, I think this is the one with the most components, yet it is still recognisably Ciuta’s work. There is always a stillness there and an elegance of flow. Many combinations of elements cycle over and over again for a period of time during ‘MINA’. This process becomes like a hook, and for a while you know what is going to happen next, like watching the waves in the sea. It gives you time to take in how the layers interlink. You can explore the same combination of sounds repeatedly in different ways. Examine textures. Listen to the horizontal movement and the vertical depth.

Sometimes a sinister wind appears from nowhere and adds an air of foreboding, and occasionally, particularly towards the end, a sudden tide of sound rolls in catching you completely unaware. The whole composition tapers off to an undulating hum that evens out into a steady state electronic drone bringing everything to a universal stillpoint.

Virgilio Oliveira | Rio Douro/Douro River, Vol. 1

by Cheryl Tipp

Last year I stumbled across Green Field Recordings, a Portuguese netlabel that focuses on works derived from pure field recordings. This chance encounter led me to a wonderful selection of publications from the likes of Anton Mobin, James Wyness, David Velez and others who are rapidly becoming respected figures in the world of phonography and sonic art.

Several titles in the Green Field Recordings series focus on water. This is not particularly surprising given the infinite range of sounds created by water and it’s always interesting to see what direction the recordist decides to take their work; whether to manipulate the raw field recordings into new pieces or simply present the unadulterated recordings in their original context.

Released earlier this year, Rio Douro / Douro River vol. 1 follows the path of pure phonography, presenting a collection of recordings that document stages of a journey made by Virgilio Oliveira and Joana Estevao along the Rio Douro during the summer of 2010. An accompanying blog, www.douro-mapasonoro.blogspot.co.uk, was set up to provide additional information about the project and is well worth a visit. The intention of the recording trip was to capture the different sonic ambiences that exist along the course of the Rio Douro and Oliveira certainly presents us with a mixed bag of soundscapes.

The concept is very similar to Luis Antero’s fantastic Impulsive Habitat release O Rio (IHab038). Both use sound to represent different locations along the course of a specific river. Whereas Antero strongly maintained a running theme of water throughout O Rio, only occasionally digressing from the core subject, Oliveira has ventured further afield, often leaving the actual sound of the river behind in favour of exploring the surrounding communities and figures. The following statement was taken from the project blog and helps us understand Oliveira’s approach:

“The Douro River was, and still is, a source of richness for the region and for its surrounding villages. In the old days, it propelled the watermills that spread throughout its banks, it allowed for fishing, it irrigated the fields and would fill the wells of the best gardens in Bemposta, where fruit trees and season novelties would be cultivated, the main livelihood of the local population.”

The Rio Douro acts as a hub from which different sound environments radiate and this notion of the river’s central role is reflected in Oliveira’s selection. The river is not just a flowing body of water cutting through the Portuguese landscape, but rather a crucial element of the larger environment with an influence that extends further than is initially perceived. A very nice piece of work.

rui almeida | nuno miranda ribeiro | glass over water under light

by Elliot Loe

“Glass over water under light” is an unusual sound work based on “field recordings”.

There are no traces of pure environmental recordings, neither “natural” sounds but nevertheless the whole work has to be considered “concrète” in its essence.

Everything is build around the buzzing noise of a fluorescent light that provides a static canvas over which the composers (Rui Almeida, Nuno Miranda Ribeiro and Maria Oliveira)  developed an improvisation with al least three different sound sources: water, glasses and a photographic camera.

Throughout the duration of the work (single track, 22:05) the objects are played as if they were musical instruments and therefore each sound retains the characteristics of the object itself but it also reflects the gesture of stimulating the object in particular and distinctive ways.

Although made with a limited set of sound sources the outcome is incredibly heterogeneous for what concerns the characteristics of timbre and dynamic and can be easily considered as a traditional musical piece, but unlike traditional musical pieces, here the most prominent trait of the recording is the evident link between the “performance” and the “materials” used to perform.

I want to add some questions that have come to my mind while listening to “Glass over water under light”. I do not want to find answers here but I’d like to encourage the reader to listen to this composition in order to fill out my “blank spaces”.

How much the performance is influenced by prior notions about the “instruments”?

Is there a kind of score in the performance or is it just an involuntary reaction that aims to explore the sounds in “real time”?

When the performer generates a sound, is he/she aware that the tactile sensation caused by the act of hitting, stroking, scraping the objects, is nothing more that the future vibration mapped within a slightly different domain?

Can an improvisation be regarded as a collection of tactile reactions?

Everyone knows the sound a drinking glass can make, but “knowing” a sound does it mean that we know how to “play” it?

I voluntarily use the verb “to play” because the whole point here is not about the act of recording but it is about the establishment of the sound, it is about its birth.

“Glass over water under light” is a very interesting soundwork because it shifts the attention before the actual recording takes place and even before the birth of the sound. The attention is completely focused on the actions of exploring an object and studying its behavior under different conditions and contexts.

James Wyness | The Bridge

by Ellot Loe

One of the most exciting aspects of a field recording session is the feeling of becoming an explorer who suddenly falls within a completely new perceptive dimension.

It is sufficient to wear a pair of headphones and press the record button to be shifted into a new reality: even the most familiar environment seems to offer us new listening perspectives. It is like discovering every time an augmented reality with a much more complex level of interactions.

Often field recordings bring up schemes or patterns, but other times field recordings make us deeply aware of the high level of randomness that rules the world we live in.

“The Bridge” by James Wyness is a good example of the mixture of the two aspects above mentioned: patterns and randomness.

This audio work is an investigation of sonic phenomena in the Scottish Borders and North Northumberland and it focus its attention around the footbridge over the River Teviot.

The bridge, which is the main audio source of the recordings, has been “excited” in various way and the different sonic responses have been recorded using several techniques and varieties of microphones.

The final result is an engaging listening that blends the documentary purposes of the work with an approach that often can be found in sound installations.

In fact the bridge becomes here a true audio installation and it represents an open door to a new sonic environment.

Low rumbles, selected high frequencies and screeching noises have been layered and overlapped in order to form a moving mass of seething drones that evolves in the background while a dense collection of metallic noises builds up a detailed picture of the “new” bridge.

Field recordings such these make clear that the sound is just the result of a long process of interactions that eventually manifests itself in the form of vibrations.

The mechanical structure of the bridge is the instrument that has been played by the author and by the natural environment.

As every other traditional musical instrument the bridge provides different level of expressiveness and, as demonstrated by James Wyness, the work of the field recordist is not merely to record sounds, but instead it also consists in learning how to “play” these particular instruments.

Ellot Loe

Carlo Giordani | II Seglo del Posto

by Alan Smithee

Over the past years the sound recording equipment has become more accesible just like it happened in the past with video and photography equipment and with software licensing.

On a sound workshop where I participated last semester in Bogotá I noticed the amusement and fun people had while capturing and editing audio. A few months later some people who weren’t interested on this method of work now are using it as part of their creative processes. They seemed happy to be able to make music without formal musical knowledge and without synthesizers, guitars or drum machines but most important they discovered “the hearing”, they discover the pleasure behind the most simple sounds in their everyday’s life and how those sounds are powerful material for creative and compositional purposes.

The language of visual images has been appropriated by the marketing and design industry. The utilitarian sense and purpose is behind every image we see: We fell exposed to sales and commerce when in front of visual images.

The previous paragraphs try to find why today more people are finding their voice when capturing and editing audio, a subject of current interest addressed by Simon Whetham on this blog on a recent essay.

The practice of composing using sound captures requires for the artist to have a capacity for abstraction, a capacity to differ the casual hearing from the reduced hearing and create in their imagination sound images apart from the actual causality of those sounds.

Il segno del posto (the sign of the place) is a work made with field recordings with little post production. I couldn’t find liner notes for the work and instead found some text on Carlo Giordani’s blog where, after a poor Google translation, I realize he says he is not interested in talking about his capturing / editing process. This statement puzzles me as a reviewer but make a lot of sense as a listener and artist: Sound is so powerful and specific as medium that anything you put to its side, whether text or images, could potentially diminish its perceptual value. This is a subject that I am sure many sound artists have dealt with and Carlo Giordani did it in a very effective way through this statement.

On another regard to Simon Whetham’s essay he also addresses the unsatisfying need  among critics and reviewers of “new material” in the field of field recording based music and sound works. I guess mainstream-like media is being drawn to this kind of works but not all the critics and reviewers are being able to make an reduction and to hear beyond the sounds they listen. Seemingly when this unimaginative reviewers listen to a bird on a composition they listen to all the birds and to one bird simultaneously but they might not be listening to “this” bird and most important they might not be capable to listen to the bird away from the bird himself.

In Il segno del posto the listener moves between familiar and unfamiliar sonorities making him to constantly deal with certainty and uncertainty and this is where this work is the most strong at, depicting a series of perceptual moments linked and differenced through the casual and reduced hearing establishing a tension between them through the timeline. Although Il segno del posto is an eleven-piece work I still conceive it as a single experience that goes across different sites but that somehow creates a narrative line which I depict as one subjective perspective perceiving different objectual moments: when the listener listens to a bird on this release he listens to this bird and he also listens to “the bird” in Carlo Giordani perception; this is another strong achievement of the artists on this release.

Regarding his work  Carlo Giordani writes on his blog:

“I look to extract from everyday life, unexpected and quaint sounds, to produce emotions from the construction of a sonorous landscape that is behind the everyday hidden sounds which we are conditioned to ignore.”

This short paragraph addresses the job of the sound artists when dealing with field recordings based composition. Seems like Carlo Giordani is trying to to make the unheard to be heard but mainly he is trying to generate new perceptions from the everyday experience; his purpose is to subtract the sound object and its perceptual meaning and through acousmatic means potentiate the sensible experience when away from the sound causalities. He clearly succeeded on Il segno del posto where the sound and its perceptual phenomena is effectively addressed and dealt with by the artists and
his artistic means.

Anton Mobin | Floating Wood

by agniworld

Again Anton Mobin gives us some happiness of travelling, and if earlier, it was a trip through London, this time it is a strange travel with “Floating Wood”, released on Green Field Recordings. Again it is a complex, or collage of field recordings, quite well put together, creating uncommon atmosphere of
observing the flow. You hear the birds, insects (the gnats are really annoying there!), some squeaks of wood, wind, purl and drops of water, some indistinct bustle. There is no audible music music here, however, the environment itself is a very nice music generator – it is a vivid and unpredictable system with irregular events and circumstances. So, join the “Floating Wood” excursion with Anton Mobin.

MUfi.re | tv signal amplifier, radio and clock

MUfi.re is a project of Rui Almeda, which is focused in finding new potentialities of non-musical natural sources. Here’s one of his albums, called “TV Signal Amplifier, Radio And Clock”, which was released on Green Field Recordings label. Needless to say, that in recording the mentioned devices were used. The idea is clear, everything is more than understandable, but… However it’s not so simple, as it seems. Ordinary sounds are put together, interacting as a real orchestra. Lifeless things acquired soul with the help of the artist’s mind. All these strange tints, changeovers, hissings, ticks and drones become vital and coloured, the texture is characterized by unpredictability, a natural feature of living creatures. So, realize the vibrancy of MUfi.re’s apparatuses. 

Alexei Biryukoff | Talmenka

review by Terry Horn  

When listening to this current release by Siberian sound artist, Alexei Biryukoff, Talmenka made me forgot where I was. I actually got “confused” with my surroundings because as I listened to this through my noise canceling headphones I knew there were no geese or trains anywhere near urban Fort Worth.

Most people don’t hear the music in everyday life and sounds so it’s always difficult for people to appreciate pure field recordings. It was hard when I was given an early Chris Watson release to listen to but as I listened I got used to hearing natural sounds in recordings, also to someone who doesn’t travel these documents are a treasure. How do you review a release of sounds from one’s surroundings? It’s like walking out your front door and reviewing what you see. I just love listening to the natural rhythm of my surroundings and this is a good example of pure field recordings. From the industrial sounds found in “a six min trip” to “rain” Mr. Biryukoff presents a nice audio presentation of his town.

Anton Mobin | Floating Wood

review by Terry Horn  

After hearing, "Tales 4 Tapes" by Anton Mobin/Ayato, I've been downloading and listening to as much A. Mobin's stuff I can find, and there is a lot out there. Most is good, some are mediocre, and a very few are less than interesting but “Floating Wood” is beautiful. It’s mysterious, a bit creepy when some of the animal sounds come in, and a bit calming with the water and rain sounds. I felt like I lost 20 minutes of my life and I didn’t care that I lost that time. When the mbira sound comes in part of the way through I thought this was just another ploy by an artist to get the fringe listener to be engaged in the “new age” nuances of a field recording piece but the familiar instrument tone is the background music to a great or several great pieces of sounds combined.

Mr. Mobin used several different locations for his source materials and a few different mic setups for this too. At the bottom of the little instrumentation and location information for this piece on audioblog.arteradio.com there was a quote that sums up this piece and most of all Mr. Mobin’s work perfectly:

“Calm and surrealist nothing is real in the composition which combines Improvisation & Field Recordings."