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Inpress
Bob Baker Fish - February 2006
The debut release by sound designer, performer and installation artist Camilla Hannan, More Songs About Factories (Cajid) features five works derived from Melbourne industrial sites. The majority of the elements are highly processed, yet give the title, its source looms over this intriguing release perhaps unnecessarily limiting its scope. The industrial sound of a factory or worksite make great source material and Hannan has crafted together some very interesting and quite complex pieces that move well beyond mere documentation. In Hannan's hands the rythnmic elements in particular become hypnotic cogs in a great sound piece, often layered with rumbling sweeping drones coming from afar.
The Wire
Outer Limits, Keith Moline Jan 2006
Two unfussy releases on this new Australian sound art label. Hannan's debut is a five part piece comprising heavily processed location recording of industriqal sites. Churning mechanised repetition is the order of the day, Hannan diving deep into her source material. Whether the album represents a celebration or a critique of the machine, or perhaps even a valedictory essay on post-industrial decay, is anyone's guess. But it sounds good, as does Soddell's second release on the label. Its long stretches of near-silence are interrupted by thick bursts of noise whose provenance in field recordings is certainly easier to fathhom than the cello and guitar also listed as sound sources on the sleeve. The massive dynamic range of the album makes for distinctly uneasy listening. The work of Ilios comes to mind, but Soddell's work is more colourful, less unremittingly grey and austere.
Inpress
Bob Baker Fish - 2 November 2006 - Issue No 890
Also on cajid is Camilla Hannan's More songs About Factories in which she has composed five pieces directly related to field recordings she gathered in and around Melbourne. The work is the result of two years trawling industrial sites and the sounds are quite fascinating and evocative, everything from repetitive mechanisms to brooding atmospherics that feels partly an attempt to document these incredible sounds that operate in our midst and partly a unique piece of sound design ((Fragmented Frequencies by Bob Baker Fish, Inpress issue No 890, 2 November 2005)
Vital Weekly
Frans De Waard Issue No 495
On the same label is the debut by Camilla Hannan, another female artist. 'More Songs About Factories' uses location recordings of industrial sites in Melbourne, Australia. A factory can be a great source of rhythmic music, Vivenza proved this already in the early 80s. At times Hannan sounds a bit like Vivenza, with the plain, repetitive sound of a machine. But that's only the beginning of the journey: as the CD progresses, things evolve in a more ambient sort of way, but always with the rhythmic component on it's back. And whereas Vivenza mainly used some equalization and a bit of sound effects, Hannan uses the entire set of possibilities of the computer to explore every micro-second of the music. Sometimes these processing may sound a little bit too simple and straightforward in terms of time-stretching, but throughout this is a most enjoyable CD and a well-made debut.