phenomeNEWS - This Month's Music Review

This Month's Music Review
by Greg Ozimek
music@wwnet.net

FROM THE MOTHER
Sue Young
Motherlotus Records

Only if you had spent some quality time with me would you know of my love of sound’ is second only to my love of light. Until now.

There is something both transcendent and transcending about sound: its quality, its shape, it’s ability to lead and cause one to follow, its ability to cause one to focus every sense perception in both physical and non-physical bodies to be able to experience, to really hear, what it is that is immersing you as it is presenting itself to you.

It would seem that sound can communicate by virtue of its own existence.

Sometimes I could feel like I was born in June (Gemini): I like sound more; I like music more; I like sound more. I really love music; I really love sound... And on it would go.

There is a museum of sound headquartered on the internet where I have spent some quality time.

This museum which has captured me is curated by Jim Cummings from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jim’s site, The Voice of the Planet is the Muse (or, VOP for short) is an awesome online collection of concept writings and sound clips.

The museum’s simple Internet address is: www.tinyurl.com/7ro95

“These new place (location)-inspired artists deserve a spot alongside the writers, photographers and film makers whose works have enriched our sense of the connections – and the rifts – between humanity, nature and spirit,” Jim humbly proclaims.

“We’ve all had our own experiences of the power of sound. In the multi-layered community of voices around a woodland lake or the exhilarating heart of ridgeline thunderstorm, in the gentle ambience of a neighborhood or the soul-shaking urban cacophony, we find our place in something larger than ourselves.”

Cummings’ intense, docent introductions lend his take on the magnificent texture, foundation and structure of the recorded sound clip samples which feature some of the most creative, committed producers at work in the world today.

His VOP sound museum introduces us to the recording producers themselves as well as giving an overview of a pertinent clip.

First, a word about the state-of-the-art of reproducing nature and nature-sounds: It is an awe-inspiring reality, these days (2005), to actually have the levels of sound, be they of any imaginable variety, distinctly separated and peaked, mashed or tweaked, based on the artist’s desire to (re)-create a mood.

In the first example below, my experience was one of disbelief that I was listening to bridge sounds... pieces were definitely musical; yes there was a speed bump somewhere in there, eventually!

Here are select descriptions; imagine hearing/feeling/experiencing:

Michael Rüsenberg (Köln, Germany) has been a leader in the production of urban soundscapes; his label has released discs focusing on cities throughout Europe, with approaches ranging from fairly documentary to deeply impressionistic. This track is from one of his more experimental projects, composed entirely of sounds recorded on the bridges of Cologne; each piece focuses on a different bridge and has distinctive textures.

Andra McCartney (Quebec, Canada) works with electronic transformations of field recordings. Textures was recorded in Queen Elizabeth Park, Vancouver in a marshy area of the creek where the water was fairly flat andrivulets moving past twigs and rocks made beautiful melodies. Then the recordings were slowed down by octaves [one, two and three], to explore these melodies further.

And some quotes from the recording producers themselves:

Jonathon Storm:

“Sometimes, I get shy and tell people I’m a ‘nature sound recordist.’ But actually, I’m a composer for the instrument – or orchestra of instruments –called ‘nature.’ And, I’m composing through the whole process of my work.”

Hildegard Westerkemp:

“I hear the soundscape as a language with which places and societies express themselves. In the face of rampant noise pollution, I want to be understanding and caring of this ‘language’ and how it is ‘spoken.’ I compose with any sound that the environment offers to the microphone, just as a writer works with all the words that a language provides.”

Back to Jim Cummings. “Often, we notice our soundscapes only in passing. At times, we sink in deeply and reap the rewards of connection, feeling a context within which humanity’s dance is but a peculiarly inattentive piece of the whole.”

VOP (at tinyurl.com/7ro95) is a small and important portion of www.greenmuseum.org which is a nonprofit, online museum of environmental art, which strives to advance creative efforts to improve our relationship with the natural world.

If our being can hear and inter-relate with our surrounding, enveloping environment, sound is the only trip there is.