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INSTANCE
cajid 005CD
Diffusion - Michael Day
The Wire - Keith Moline
Inpress - Bob Baker Fish
Vital Weekly - Frans De Waard
Diffusion: Sonic Arts Network
Reviewed by Michael Day
Melbourne-based sound artist Thembi Soddell’s second solo release, Instance, released on Cajid Media, is a forty-one minute work split into seven sections. Formed from field recordings and generated sound, it is described as an interpretation of the artist’s dreams.
It begins in near-silence, and develops into a quiet, but aggressively resonant tone before unexpectedly exploding into loud, intense crackles of dust and noise, and then, before you can really identify what you are listening to, it suddenly returns to distant, low level white noise, gently building into a dissociated texture of distant activity. Half-identified voices penetrate the dark like unrecognisable shadows, and as you strain to locate their source or timbre, brutal industrial sound startles you back into a more detached attention, forcing you into isolation from the humanity of the voices in the distance. Short bursts of layered noise, like hailstones or soil raining on a coffin lid break the growing tension, replaced by jet engines, a rising and maintaining of energy, cut into by drops in sound, like flashes of pure darkness penetrating a terrifying twilight. Twitches of black noise maintain this indefinite sense of shock and awe, of constant repositioning and disorientation, suggesting an uncertainty of perception, as if all this terror is being created inside your own mind.
The thematic here is the interpretation of dreams, articulated through the approach and retreat of threat. Soddell ably maintains a sense of fear and powerlessness by keeping the listener in a constantly shifting position in relation to the developing sounds. Sometimes you are jolted out of your chair by the sudden arrival of a terrifying presence, sometimes its slow approach builds a sustained tension that is only released by its unexpected disappearance. These audio apparitions are always ominous, alienating and fearful.
Soddell’s work with dynamics is extremely accomplished, alternately forcing close attention and then rewarding it with shocking explosions of activity that bring any absent-minded trains of thought right back into a brutal present. This strategy is analogous to the remembering of a dream, the recombining of dreamed events into a comprehensible sequence. The work suggests all the uncertainty of a nightmare recounted, with all its gaps and discontinuities of narrative. The virtue of this for the listener is that it will keep you on edge throughout.
Instance is the soundtrack to a descent into somewhere dark and terrifying, which maintains an atmosphere thick with the threat of unexpected violence. If you follow the instructions on the sleeve, and listen to it LOUD, it might just make you want to leave the lights on at bedtime.
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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
Fragmented Frequencies, Bob Baker Fish, Inpress No 890, 2 Nov 2005
If you love dynamics, then Thembi Soddell is your girl. She typically delights in subtle, almost intelligible atmospheres that violently erupt into, well, violence. And to be honest I', frightened of her, such is her capacity to erupt out of the blue, particularly after substantial moments of silence. She utilises white noise and static, field recordings and god knows what else to create these strange masses of sound that she manipulates, though the fact that her motives are so alien only increases the seductiveness of her work. Her second album is called Instance and is released on Cajid Media at www.cajid.com
Vital Weekly
Frans de Waard Vital Weekly 495
More music from downunder: this is Thembi Soddell's second release, following 'Intimacy' (see Vital Weekly 417). Soddell is one of the few female microsound artists I know, but her work can easily meet up with the best brothers in the field. Soddell uses an extremely dynamic sound: for minutes things can be utterly soft, seemingly with nothing happening and then things come to an explosion and they are very noise related. Again she works with field recordings but apparently also with instrument textures, but it beats which instruments that should be (the cover states cello and guitar). This gives this a slightly more musical edge than say the work of Francisco Lopez, to which especially the softer parts are related, and Kozo Inada, of whom she uses some of the very abrupt breaks in the music. Soddell comes up with a fine follow up to the debut, although no longer a surprise, still quite a nice one. http://www.staalplaat.com/vital_archive/
495.txt
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.
Artist Statement
On Transit, Lawrence English surveys a variety of radically different sonic environments and sets them against a rich array of textured electronics. Pulling together abstracted fragments from these settings, he creates an impressionistic sound portrait of his movement across Australia, Japan and the UK.
Not content with representing the overt sounds of these environments, English seeks out less apparent sound elements, such as a moment of rare quiet amidst Tokyo's Shinagawa district, movement of snow underfoot in the Scottish border country, and the deafening tones of Australia's cicada, he invites listeners to create their own narrative.
Featuring audio contributions from: John Chantler, Mike Cooper, DJ Olive, Ben Frost, Cat Hope, Tam Patton, Gail Priest, Heinz Riegler, Robin Rimbaud and Philip Samartzis.
Feardrop #12, Summer 2005
Troisième (et de loin la plus intéresante) production du label australien Cajid media, Transit est un passage subtil entre la brume et la chant. Le lyrisme de l’insaisissable, le mirage comme lieu d’émission, voilà qui resemble estrangement à un appel de sirène (jusqu’à une voix féminine qui y fredonne sur quelques instants), à un piège pour le voyageur, à une perte par la lumière et le son. Les deux sont ici distribués sans surenchère, plutôt doucement exsudés. Le voyage arrêté, le voyageur est en transit, sans doute perdu, peut-être arrivé à destination. Presque statiques, les vagues reflètent le beau travail de Lawrence English, partagé entre d’infimes chocs concrets, des field recordingd, des crépitements, des bâtons effondrés, des tintements infra, et une houle synthétique avalée par le flot, vite revigorée. S’il n’y avait cette fragilité qui dépend d’une sobriété extrême, on penserait aux sources expressionistes de Paul Schütze. Sans la même volonté paysagère, L. English dessine pourtant des formes dans le sable, les chants qui l’entourent, le vent dans le végétation, les oiseaux qui s’y balancent, et l’eau qui sourd du nuage, percé comme le mystère qui nimbait les premières minutes de l’album. Un lieu, un temps profondément poètiques que l’on investit pour finalement les habiter. A noter les contributions, pour certains sons, de Scanner, DJ Olive, P. Samartzis ...
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Diffusion (Sonic Arts Netwok)
Justin Hardison
Cajid Media’s third release is Transit by Brisbane based sound artist Lawrence English and features contributions from DJ Olive, Ben Frost, Cat Hope, Robin Rimbaud, Mike Cooper, Philip Samartzis and more. Despite the large list of guests on the album, you wouldn't know any of them had a hand in the work. The moody combination of field recordings, ominous drones, electronics and events seem to pass before you and at times you may forget that a human is responsible for manipulating what you're hearing. I couldn't pick out the guitar, bass or turntables featured but instead heard the manipulated field recordings from Vietnam, Tasmania and Thailand as well as lush rainforests, crackly announcements over loudspeakers, spiralling drones, passing birds, sine waves, sirens and what could be described as ghosts hauling furniture across the upstairs floors.
Over the course of seven tracks, Lawrence English uses Ableton Live to piece together all of the manipulated sound work and contributions and creates more of a headphone environment to experience then simply a track to listen to but after a few listens you begin to pick out things like Gail Priest's haunting vocal contribution or the sound of processed rumbling traffic. You'll also notice sounds that seem to disappear and reappear later on other tracks. I was previously unfamiliar with the work of Lawrence English but Transit has definitely tweaked my interest.
Paris Transatlantic
DW, June 2005
This third release on Cajid is the richest and most rewarding to date, featuring seven evocative and superbly crafted soundscapes by Lawrence English (who's usually based in Brisbane Australia, though I read this was recorded in Tokyo and England between 2002 and 2003), using "audio tools" supplied by Mike Cooper (guitar and voice), DJ Olive (turntables), Cat Hope (bass), Tam Patton (keyboards), Gail Priest (voice), Heinz Riegler (guitar), Robin "Scanner" Rimbaud (electronics) and field recordings from Thailand, Vietnam and Tasmania provided by, respectively, John Chantler, Ben Frost and Philip Samartzis. If I might be permitted the luxury of quoting from one of my own reviews (of Keith Berry's The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish), much recent electronic music, "as if ironically commenting on the size of the machine that produced it, a laptop about as large and heavy as a folded Sunday newspaper [..] has explored vast reverberant space." If Jérôme Noetinger ever gets round to reactivating his Metamkine Cinema For The Ear series, Lawrence English should be high on his list of potential contributors; I remember an old track by Opik on a long out-of-print Ambient compilation (Feed Your Head, on Planet Dog records) entitled "Travelling Without Moving", and that's a perfect description for English's work. Which is not to say it's music to turn on tune in and drop out to (though I imagine with a little chemical stimulation the results could be quite extraordinary): like Keith Berry, Matt Waldron, Stephan Mathieu and Akira Rabelais, English has not only a vivid imagination and a great feel for structure, but an instinctive understanding of what music is capable of stimulating on the emotional level. If Wim Wenders had waited fourteen years before making Bis Ans Ende Der Welt he could have avoided Graeme Revell's soppy cello drooling (in part three) and used Lawrence English's music instead: Wenders' ambitious and not always very convincing if quite enjoyable movie tried to imagine what dreams might look like if we could actually see them on a video screen; I like to think that if one could record dreams as purely audio information, they might sound something like this. Magical.
REALTIME (Earbash)
Jonathan Marshall
Cajid Media's 2 most recent releases could not be more dissimilar. Bruce Mowson's Static Tones constitutes a dry and unrelenting exploration of the aural perceptual effects created by throbbing, pulsing blocks of rather difficult sound. Lawrence English's Transit however is a seductive, beautiful suite which melds field recordings with airy, epic organ effects, gentle musique concrete atmospheres, and dramatic, punctilious aural flourishes.
English's 7 track set was inspired by the concept of travel and aural specificity, its sources moving from Thailand to Tasmania, the urban fringes of Japan, Northern England and Vietnam. While these samples broadly evoke the concept of place, English lifts these discrete elements out of their original context and mixes them so that no specific sites or aural landscapes are directly evoked. The effect suggests a sense of gradual change or horizontal movement from one environment to another (mostly from track to track), coupled with a strong impression of how these once site-specific sonic motifs have become deeply embedded within the warp and weft of these new, abstract aural realms. The sounds have therefore changed from being field recordings–recorded "in the field", constituting a form of sonic anthropology or record–to become strongly implicated within and affiliated to a broad, gently cycling and moving field of sound, a cloud-like blanket or nexus of mobile elements within which they sit.
The manipulation of the depth of field makes up one of the primary organizing principles of English's composition. Smaller sounds with a sharper attack and decay, such as plucked strings, tapped tubes, lightly-scraped phonograph needles, distorted vocals, ceramic clicks, bird or insect sounds, short sine wave and beeps, and other fragments, occupy the sonic foreground, while indeterminate rumbles or harmonious tones fill the background, providing a deep yet fluctuating bed into which these lighter elements are placed. If there is a weakness across the pieces overall it is in the use of choral-like organ chords or hummed vocals to convey a sense of the epic, the beautiful and/or the mysterious which at times approaches dated, New Age cliches from Brian Eno or Vangelis. English's wavering sonic fields are however too richly complicated to permit his work to actually conform with such worn motifs. It is indeed partly by skirting such familiar references that English makes his evocative materials so easy and pleasurable to listen to. For those looking for contemporary sound art which largely avoids the impenetrable aural harshness or difficulty of much otherwise fine new work, English's gorgeous, evocative collection should not be missed.
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AVERSIONONLINE.COM
This is my first exposure to the work of Australian artist Lawrence English, and what an exceptional piece of work it is. I was immediately impressed by the beautiful ambience of minimal opener "Oceanic Drift", but that's just scratching the surface of the general palette of the disc. On this particular CD, English is joined by a number of other contributors - supplying guitar, vocals, turntables, bass, keyboards, etc. Also contributed are field recordings from a variety of exotic locations, including Thailand, Vietnam, and Tasmania. Interestingly enough the record itself was recorded in both Tokyo and London, while edited together in Brisbane, Australia - all of which took place from late-2002 to mid-2003. Worth mentioning, however, is that these guest appearances are limited to various areas of the disc, and therefore the end result is something that remains consistent and unified, it's not at all a random jumble of different sounds/performers. "That Was a Lucky One" is similarly minimal in its lush ambient flow, possessing subtler movement in the distance along with a few samples of people speaking (practically inaudibly) alongside brighter ringing and shuffling textures placed against the humming low-end. "Closing Frame" opens with the sounds of chirping birds over a strange midrange texture that also sounds more like a natural environment: Dryer and more organic than some of the ambient tones employed in the first two tracks. But as the eight-minute composition progresses some pulsing drones do come into play, along with an almost piercing high-end tone that's carefully placed in the mix so as not to disturb the humming vocals or melodic undercurrents. "Run Off" is similar in its blend of outdoor sounds and rumbling low-end, though it's somehow darker in tone, not to mention somewhat more minimal and delicate in arrangement. "Shinagawa (Moment on Tokaido)" possesses some of the same characteristics to a more melodic degree, as a passing movement glides across harmonic swells that ebb and flow over time. Another deeper and somewhat more minimal piece presents itself in "Dual Process", which actually ups the ante on sinister ambience even compared to "Run Off", and this continues in the even deeper "Winter Sun"! This is another longer selection at seven minutes, and is also among the softest and most subdued of the entire release. Excellent work, too! The disc is handsomely packaged in a simple digipack with a few images of leaves and crisp, clean text. Simple yet effective. All in all this makes for a truly enjoyable listening experience, and this is a significantly more interesting release than the other material I've encountered from Cajid Media, so I'm very pleased with this one. The sound quality and everything about the record just has a nice, deliberate sense of quality that certainly comes through in the music itself. Very nice, indeed. Experimental listeners with a taste for the artistic ambient side should absolutely look into this CD.
Running time - 45:11, Tracks: 7
[Notable tracks: Oceanic Drift, Dual Process, Winter Sun]
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The Wire
Jim Hayens, Outer Limits, March 2005
"A digital radiance binds, envelops and abstracts all the sounds found on Transit from the Australian sound artist Lawrence English. Considering that his source material comes from Robin Rimbaud, DJ Olive, Philip Samartzis and a whole host of other contributors, English's ability to galvanise everything into a cohesive composition is a necessity - lest the album crumble under the strain of disparate field recordings, turntablist gestures, guitar scrabblings and wordless vocalisations. English softens all the edges and extends particular timbres into oceanic swells that ebb and flow in conjunction with the haunted melodies that lumber in the distance, at times resembling the gaping spaces of Thomas Koner and at others the incidental music of Tarkovsky's Stalker. Quiet, unprocessed events of metallic clamour and the chorus of chatty birds deftly balance the cold, hard polish that English applies to his shodowy, rippling ambience."
Stylus
Bryan Berge
The digital clock gives off a sickly green light. You turn over in your half-sleep and try to read the numbers, but they blur before your bleary eyes. A jumble of senses confronts you: the sounds of an insomniac city out the window, the buzz and whir of your heart and head, shadows stretching like languid ghosts over the furniture.
How different this strange sleepy night world is from the one you encounter wide-awake. How incomprehensible it is. . .
Interpretations of reality are always acts of imagination, but normally they follow principles of reason that, if limited, are familiar and comprehensible. But on the verge of sleep, the mind loses its grip on familiar structures, and the logic of dreams seeps into real life. Think of the bizarre history of nocturnal hallucinations. The boundary between waking life and unconsciousness is the prime space for the mixture of fantasy and reality, mysticism and lucidity.
Lawrence English’s Transit is a sonic portrait of this process. Mr. English captures the simple sounds of life—insect buzzes, bird chirps, passing cars, alarms, and incidental vocal snippets—but with the help of a posse of like-minded sound artists, he transforms them into surreal transmissions from a dream plane. The world he interprets is normal (his sound sources will be familiar to any listener), but his interpretation of it is magical. Transit is his hallucination—a vision of a foggy perma-night inhabited by solemn, torch-wielding prophets, living storm clouds, and somnambulant hordes of brooding wildlife.
Opener “Oceanic Drift” layers deep and oceanic drones over Mike Cooper’s voice and guitar, which sound distantly as if they drifting in from a far off room to die at the foot of Mr. English’s bed. A haunting wind whispers through the track and crackles of electronic manipulation blister the surface of the solid drones. The track defines Mr. English’s aesthetic; much of the album is superficially similar—somber and grand, with a sense of dark mystery. Luckily his sound is so rich and complex that it truly is an aesthetic rather than stylistic water-treading.
Despite this over-arching mood, some tracks break the mold. “Closing Frame” forsakes the open spaces of the ambient soundscape for the claustrophobia of noise. The track opens with two field-recording classics: cricket chirps and bird songs. A faint drum intones a simple rhythm underneath them. The beat brings forth a swell of crickets that overwhelms all other sound besides the insistent thump. I picture a crazed shaman summoning a plague of insects to ravage an enemy. The sound amplifies from a cacophony of crickets to a menacing blizzard of noise until a thick patch of electronic angel-voices clears the air and invites the birds to sing again.
Mr. English turns a dreamer’s ear to the real world. Listen to this album as you stare out the window and watch as the cars take flight. Listen to this as you fall asleep and feel your mind melt. Search for the magic hidden beneath our common defenses against an overwhelming reality.
Phosphor
(mvk)
Transit is a hybrid of drones and field recordings that contains contributions from DJ Olive, Philip Samartzis and Robin Rimbaud (among others), and deploys a wide variety of sources, some of which were recorded in Japan, Vietnam and Scotland. These field recordings were juxtaposed with one another in order to hint towards possible relations between these different elements. Previously unrelated, these different components are skillfully glued together by English, who elaborates on possible coherences and resonances between these different sonic domains. However, the nature of the material from these different contexts is sometimes relatively abstract, which problematizes determining the original context of a given sound, making it tricky to appreciate the de- and recontextualization performed by the artist. Besides, this talk about source material, and its intrinsic authenticity derived from originary setting that is appropriated in new and unexpected ways, has lost some of its relevance in an age where the palette of sounds is pretty much endless due to the abundance of effects, and increasing complexity in terms of editing and manipulation that contemporary technology delivers. The musician in a way has become an artisan, tracing contours and tendencies of intrinsically relatable sonic sequences, allowing them to intertwine and confront one another. Throughout the recording, English displays the capability to do so. Some combinations are somewhat daring, and perhaps illogical, which to me only attests to his qualities and capabilities as a composer. Well crafted and beautifully engineered, Transit is a welcome addition to anyone interested in intertwinings of drones and musique concrete.
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Cyclic Defrost
Bob Baker Fish
A lo fi warbling mass of electronically treated field recordings opens Brisbane based sound artist, Lawrence English’s Transit. It’s a modus operandi that he persists with for the remainder of the subtle contemplative work, merging together multiple contributions from numerous artists including DJ Olive, Philip Samartzis, Mike Cooper, Ben Frost, Cat Hope and Robin Rimbaud (Scanner). English constructs new abstract sound worlds from his contributors who offer field recordings from Thailand, Tasmania, Vietnam and electronics, guitar, voice and turntables in varying combinations. Transit is filled with repeated moments of subtle beauty, such as closing frame in which Gail Priests ethereal vocals are the perfect counterpoint to the harsh field recordings and high pitches. Whilst it is not clear precisely what English is bringing to the table, the majority of the pieces exist in a droning, drafty, drifting world punctuated by passing cars, fidgeting moments of movement and fleeting undefined fragments of sound.-
Vital Weekly #456
Frans De Waard
The Australian label Cajid comes around again with their release and now they have someone whose work I encountered before. Lawrence English is the name and he is a sound environmentalist but extending his soundscapes with instruments. His previous 3" CD was reviewed in Vital Weekly 318. Not that he plays everything himself, but he gets recordings from people to use. People such as Philip Samartzis whom delivers field recordings from Tasmania, Robin Rimbaud (electronics), Cat Hope (bass), DJ Olive (Turntables) and others. If I understand correctely he recorded all of these in the various locations of a long travel: ?London, Tokyo and Brisbane - hence the title. English plays ambient music, incorporating both field recordings (crickets, people speaking, cars passing) and synthesized musics, but the addition of other people's instruments sort of expands this a little bit. It's quite nice and intimate music that he plays here, one that is really ambient: it fills your environment without being overtly present. Perhaps not the most original voice in this already crowded field, but the seven tracks are executed with care and grace, and that's nice in itself enough.
SPLENDID
If you've ever wished that your daily routine could be soundtracked by vaguely ominous noises, Lawrence English has apparently come to save the day. That seems like the only possible explanation for Transit, which sounds as if English rolled tape with a live mic, then forgot about it -- and facing a deadline, panicked and sent the resulting recording to his label as a finished album. How else could you explain "Closing Frame", which sounds like someone showering, then humming, and finally accidentally putting the mic too close to some speakers? Or "Run Off", which sounds like English left his phone off the hook a little too long (perhaps dodging his label's calls), then decided to do a load of laundry?
?To be fair, there's a moment in "Shinagawa (Moment On Tokaido)" when traffic noises and chirping birds are joined by glacial, Sigur Rós-like slabs of synth, and "Dual Process"'s banging wrapping-paper tubes are backed by the same noises you hear in Radiohead's "Lucky" right before the guitars kick in. Unfortunately, the rest of Transit never rises above found-sound status; it's possible that English was listening to Svefn-G-Englar or OK Computer in an adjacent room.
STATIC TONES
cajid 002CD
Artist Statement
Paris Transatlantic
Splendid ezine - Walt Miller
Cyclic Defrost - Bob Baker Fish
What are “Static Tones”?
Bruce Mowson’s "Static Tones" project explores perception through static or near static time-based media presentations. Spaces are filled with an intricate yet unchanging mass of sound, comprised of tiny repeating fragments. These Static Tones seek to create perceptual distortions – a dreamy and nightmarish experience of the ceaselessness of time and the fleeting touch of sound in space. Bruce is interested in sounds from “below the radar” of consciousness - from the "silent" world of fan, computer and motor drones in a modern city, to the sculptural mass of rock music. In this project, he is interested in how this particular combination of time, space and mass can create a states of feeling.
Artist Statement
The psycho-acoustic space that I wish to create, through Static Tones, feels like a detached absorption. I'm aware of myself hearing, identifying, measuring, zoning in and out, and hearing again. Even though I know that the music is static, I perceive change - the volume appears to be swelling, there appears to be a rhythmic sound coming from behind me, a beeping note appears to be in the foreground. I find this sensation, or awareness, compelling. With Static Tones, I have tried to open up this space of perception, and in the nature of an experiment, the control is that the music doesn't change - if you perceive change, it is from you.
That said, the sounds have been partly selected for the way that they tend to work with the acoustics of a room, creating a phenomenon though which you hear different details of the mix as you move your head. With limiting the scope of the music in so many ways, it's nice to be generous with this spatial, or physical, dimension.
For me, in life, it is difficult to stop and identify exactly what is... is it me, my environment... how can I change the past/present/future... is it my attitude, or my actions? The space of these notions and feelings, about being and the passing of time, hopefully find their way into Static Tones...
Paris Transatlantic Feb 2005
Walt Miller
"Headphones not permitted" it says on the record. Don't you fuckin' tell me what not to do, matey! If I want to listen to Merzbow at bernhard günter volume or vice versa (choose Scumtron and you can have both at the same time!) that's my business! Actually, the Cajid Media press release is a little more diplomatic: "headphones not recommended." Anyway, they've got a point. On a set of cans this stuff would be completely without interest, as listener participation (i.e. a slight move of the head left or right, or up and down, or a brief trip to the smallest room to vomit if you play it loud enough) is what Mowson's three pieces are all about. Not exactly a new idea (try it out with any sustained unchanging music and you'll find it works – particularly recommended are La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, David First and Sachiko M, of course) but always good for a few minutes' worth of fun. The first track lasts 12'30" but the music (I'm not sure that's the right for this stuff, but we'll stick with it) stops at 9'00". Similarly track two (total duration 13'05") falls silent, though not for long, after 9'36", and in track three your head stops spinning before the album itself does. Great review, eh? Well, there's not much else to say. If this is the kind of acoustic research that you like to indulge in, this is right up your alley. Here in my smallish living room I can't really push the volume high enough to get the thrill of it all, relations with neighbours being tense enough as it is. I rather fancy I'd enjoy it more in a gallery installation context. But the choice is up to you.—DW
Melbourne-based media artist Bruce Mowson is attracted to sounds that fly beneath the radar of consciousness -- the under-noticed ambience that fills modern civilization, and thus the ears of the typical urban dweller. Hence, everything from motor vehicles to the din of your CPU fan serve as inspirations here, where a collection of short, cyclic loops and frequencies are piled electronically into a hulking mass. There's really nothing much more to it: Static Tones falls in the ambient/noise spectrum, but appears to start with but a sliver of an idea and stretch it out over thirty eight hypnotic minutes, separated into three longish tracks. The average listener won't hear much nuance, but it's in there. However, It's hard to tell whether the ear picks up intrinsic movement in the sound or Mowson is gently tweaking it all. The results are akin to taking a stethoscope to a refrigerator, amplifying and EQing its hum until the purr of the cooling cycle is enlarged to freakish, juggernaut proportions. Over his three long vignettes, Mowson repeats these micro-dimensional fragments until they lose meaning; the only contrast comes in the form of sudden quiet -- startling silences that are integral parts of each work.
Released on the Aussie experimental label Cajid, Static Tones, pushes the concepts of minimalism to the edge of the envelope. You can either roll your eyes at the singular vision behind it all (one that brings new meaning to the phrase "beating a dead horse") or you can lose yourself in the grand cacophony of unadulterated trance music. Whether you buy into Mowson's point of view or not, it at least serves as a provocative reminder: music swirls around and through the air, no matter where we are, even when we aren't paying attention.
Cyclic Defrost Issue #9 (October 2004)
Bob Baker Fish
Static Tones is an apt title for this work by Melbourne sound artist Bruce Mowson, perhaps best known as the co director of the Liquid Architecture Sound Art Festival. Generating an unchanging mass of sound imbued with an internal repetitive rhythm, Mowson has produced three twelve and a half minute plus tracks that though they are in reality as the title suggests static, appear to be constantly though quite subtly changing. This is a project that actively invites your ears play tricks upon you, which they inevitably do when faced with such an unmoveable slab of sound. If you are actively listening, in order to make sense of what you are hearing it seems your ears are drawn to highlight particular aspects of the sounds, allowing the listener to break up the piece and have revealed for the first time previously hidden internal sounds and cadences. Though it’s not noise music as such, Mowson is working with thick deep tones that can become quite intense at high volumes. What may be more disquieting however is the concept behind the work, and the unshakeable feeling that all listeners are somehow just guinea pigs in Mowson’s sonic experiments.
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Phosphor Magazine
After an excellent CD by Thembi Soddell, Cajid Media's second release presents another Melbourne sound artist called Bruce Mowson. He is the co-director of the Liquid Architecture sound art festival. His debut album features a small collection of repetitive tracks built upon one sound. Due to the constant repetition a pulsating structure occurs, creating a hypnotizing effect. This constant flow of sound reminds each time of a machine doing his jobs without a hitch. A minimalistic approach that has a great impact on the mind. Bruce Mowson fills spaces with this mass of sound, creating an illusion of movement and change. And that's true, with just a little imagination one hears much more than there actually is.
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&_notes 10 (ampersand)
A new release from cajid media (www.cajid.com ? based in Bendigo): Bruce Mawson?s Static Tones. This is three longish pieces (around 12 minutes but not all is sound) based on Œtiny repeating fragments? which are repeateddensely and minimalistically in an unchanging seeming sound flow during the length of the track. A quick look at a wave output does show a pretty consistent form. The result is like being inside a throbbing machine ? the tracks are different in their constructs but similar in their construction. As you listen, moving around (headphones are Œnot permitted?) different interactions occur (similar to some of Ikeda?s music) providing an at-home installation experience. To some boring and overdrawn, but to others a fine addition to your atmospherics. - Jeremy Keens
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vital weekly
This is the first time I hear of Bruce Mowson, who is a sound artist from Melbourne and co-director of the Liquid Architecture national sound art festival. His musical approach is with 'static tones': taking a whole bunch of small loops (and I mean really small, maybe 1/10 of a second), which are running at the same time, like an uncontrolled mass, like flies, like insects or bats: loads of black static sound, in which there seems to be hardly any change. Each of the three pieces last around twelve and half minute, whereas maybe one minute would have been enough to do the same time. A loop record - one with endless grooves - would have been maybe even more appropiate. Now it seems to miss the point. Three, fairly similar tracks, both in execution, but also in approach, that start and stop, but without much development or even the slightest minimalist chance. Maybe I just miss a point here and there. (FdW)
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Reviews of “Static Tones” performances
"Bruce Mowson’s work of stark minimalism contrasted forcefully with Priest’s complex multilayering. The affable Mowson presented his piece with a short contextualisation of the piece’s provenance in his Static Tones project–his aim is to produce the most minimal, pared-back "communication [where] very little changes." Mowson’s role in the performance was "limited to pressing start" at the computer console; thereafter, shrouded in the darkness of the blacked out stage, he experienced the piece along with the audience. Powerhouse, created onsite and loosely inspired by Sonic Youth’s Freezer Burn, followed the structure of Mowson’s other work in the long-term project: an aggressive start and finish, with a "12-odd minute plateau" of sound in between. The result was a minimalist triumph: a grainy, gritty, aggressive assault on the senses that brought the listener’s attention ineluctably to confronting the nature and experience of perception."
"As the sounds bore on, distinct sounds emerged from the mix; the frenzied thumping of a power turbine, the crackling of electricity, the humming of conductors. The initial snarl of industrial noise gradually disaggregated as the listener became aware of distinct elements in the mix and their interrelation. Ears attuned to the slightest changes in the hammering, buzzing, metallic drone–the piece became a rebus, inviting constant exploration and reconsideration. As with the experience of viewing certain kinds of optical art, the brain refreshes every few seconds, seeking new patterns or ways of understanding, and the constant internal dialogue produced by the questioning of experience was a uniquely and intellectually stimulating. A few heated arguments erupted at the bar at intermission as to whether the sound actually did change at all. Regardless, the highly specific construction and execution (the whole effect is rather like colour-field painting for the ears) rendered the work a brilliant exercise in percipience that thoroughly deserved its rapturous applause." Danni Zuvela, Realtime, review of Liquid Architecture 4 (2003)
"Bruce Mowson’s severe approach to composition, 12 minutes of complex and unchanging drones, was the surprise of the evening. The psychoacoustic effect of the music was like a mirage, with details of the sounds emerging and receding even though there were in fact no changes in it at all. A worthy successor to Jim Tenney’s "For Ann (Rising)," I look forward to hearing more." Ed Osborn, Stretcher Archives, August 2003
The festival overall, however, was notable for its diversity. Bruce Mowson for example has a technologically-dirty-sounding take on minimalism, looping simple, hissy sounds so that his drones become the aural equivalent of op-art. Aural perceptions generate changes in modulation and emphasis where none objectively exist. Mowson’s short festival offering may not have been his best, but it had the elegant simplicity which informs all of his work. Jonathan Marshall, Realtime, review of Liquid Architecture 3 (2002)
Cyclic Defrost
The debut release from Melbourne label Cajid is a puzzling work that appears to draw upon some of the darker elements of human relations. Entitled Intimacy, a quick scan of track titles reveals violation, withdrawal, mistrust, discomfort, repulsion and expectation – hardly some of the rosier aspects of relationships. The sounds seemingly garnered from field recordings spend much of the time barely perceivable, operating on the edge of listening before they will gradually grow from a faint hiss into dull rumbling, before becoming vaguely comprehensible, often crescendoing into noise before everything is abruptly taken back to the edge of listening again. It’s a strange jarring and uncomfortable world, then again so are the actions and emotions they depict. Soddell seems to favor the elements; the sounds of wind and rain to flesh out her minimal though emotionally volatile landscape and there’s no denying the dark feel of this complex and disquieting work. - Bob Baker Fish Jan 2005 http://www.cyclicdefrost.com
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Splendid
Australian experimental label Cajid Media is off to a great start with its first release, this interesting disc of sculpted ambience from an active Mebourne academic and sound artist. Thembi Soddell's debut is filled with stark, sometimes startling contrast; most of her processed electronic output fills the disc with tiny, barely-there granules, so quiet at first that you aren't quite sure if it's the album or nearby traffic that your ears are perceiving. Then it starts: a growing urgency, expanding geometrically from crawl to trot to full-out sprint. Almost suddenly, Soddell unleashes his big bang, one of several mammoth ice storms of thick, hellish cacophony (akin to taking a nap inside an SST engine, or riding a wayward locomotive off an ocean pier into the eye of a hurricane). It's a paralyzing sound, and the only choice is to knuckle down and ride it out. With headphones on, you feel it blasting you from all sides, relentless, suffocating and... wonderful. And then it's gone.
This is Intimacy's familiar cycle: Soddell uses tranquility and chaos to play sonic cat and mouse games with her audience. As with suspense films, sound is used as a tool for teasing, giving hints at what lurks around the corner, building anticipation. But unlike many B-grade flicks, Soddell actually has the goods to make the wait worth it, delivering a tension-filled thrill ride in the climactic scenes, if not exactly frightening our socks off.
Many of Soddell's sounds have a field-recorded feel, and listeners will have fun trying to identify sources when they are perceptible. For the majority of Intimacy, you'll find yourself straining to hear what's in store. This will be a drag for most palates, but will hit just the right spot for the thrill-seeking segment of the chin strokin' population.- Walt Miller, Splendid ezine9 Dec 2004 http://www.splendidezine.com/
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The Wire
Over the past five years or so, the sound art programme at Australia's RMIT college (university) has graduated a number of students who have gone to make exceptional work, but continue to toil in relative obscxurity outside of Melbourne. Thembi Soddell is one of many intriguing Australian composers and draws heavily from the acousmatic principles of Francisco Lopez . Her performances have ocasionally found her quietly sitting within the audience, which was mostly unaware that the shy girl in the corner was actually responsible for the torrents of noise punctuated by abrupt silences. Like most of Lopez's productions, Soddell culls her source material from field recordings of rain and wind, densely layered into heavy masses of low-end hiss. But where Lopez suspends time and space, Soddell's Intimacy is a quick 25 minutes jaunt that energetically builds a dynamic sequence of theatrical bursts for these environmental sounds before terminating in silence. - Jim Haynes, Outer Limits, The Wire, Dec 2004.
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Paris Transatlantic
Based in Melbourne and working predominantly with transformed field recordings as she is, I confidently expect to see a Thembi Soddell album out someday on Naturestrip (see above) - in the meantime here is Intimacy, a suite of sorts of six continuously running movements entitled "Violation", "Withdrawal", "Mistrust", "Discomfort", "Repulsion" and "Expectation". Sounds scary enough to be a kind of imaginary rape scenario you might think (originally the work was designed for an installation performance in a "dark and claustrophobic space lined with red drapes"), but the sound doesn't automatically follow correspond to what the titles might lead you to expect: "Violation" and "Withdrawal" both crescendo menacingly but only (perceptibly) towards the end, "Mistrust" is a 37 second white noise apocalypse (you may curse me for having told you this, but the instruction on the disc "before listening it is recommended the volume be set with track three at maximum loudness" should have tipped you off.. the instruction is a bit theatrical and frankly unnecessary, as the track is, in context, going to bring you up with a severe shock anyway, whatever the volume setting of your system). "Discomfort" also rises in intensity until it peaks in "Repulsion", after which the closing "Expectation" leaves you guessing, which I suppose is what expectation is all about. At just under 26 minutes it's about the length of what these days gets sold as a maxi single; shame it couldn't have been paired with another more contrasting work. I'm inclined to think that Soddell has a good ear and sound sense of timing and structure, but I'd like to hear more of her work to make sure first. - DW. Paris Transatlantic, Sept 2004.
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Phosphor
The Melbourne-based artist Thembi Soddell graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 2002. She did quite a lot of exhibitions in her hometown between 2000 and 2003. This might be of no surprise, because her work is very suitable as sound installation. Intimacy starts at the treshold of perception, making the first part of
the opening track a sort of unconscious listening experience. The distance to the sound source seems to be huge. All of a sudden this changes and a dark wave of sound washes. A wall of white noise dominates to one's surprise. It disappears just as unexpectedly as it came to existance. This is a recognizable aspect of Thembi Soddell's work. Her work is mainly based upon the manipulation of field/environmental recordings. The six tracks are of a constant and hig level: beautiful and intelligent waves of
manipulated, layered and digitalized sound particles with fluctuating sound levels.
This is the first release by Cajid Media, a company concentrating on Australian experimental sound and video. Bruce Mowson's Static tones will be the second. Hopefully, it will be just as good. - Paul Bijlsma, Phosphor Magazine, Berlin
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Vital Weekly
Another new label from down under and another new artist. Thembi Soddell graduated in 2002 from RMIT in Melbourne and after that she presented her work in concerts, gallery installation and her interest lies mostly in the narrative nature of dynamics (silence vs noise). The work on this CD, six parts in twenty-six minutes is from a four channel installation at the exhibition '360 Degrees: Women In Sound'. Apperentely all of the sounds used here are from processed field recordings, and upon hearing them, I thought: hmmm... she went to the same field as where Senor Lopez does his field recordings. Stretched out fields (pun intended) of processed hissing sounds, with the difference that Thembo Soddell builts them quicker and to a much louder volume. There is a certain surprise element in this music: things can change quite abruptly, from quite loud to quite low. This makes 'Intimacy' into a nice CD, even when the idea of dynamics aren't very new and neither is the use of field r ecordings. However, in general this is not a bad work at all, and actually I quite enjoyed hearing this. - Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 417, The Netherlands
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Realtime
Thembi Soddell’s Intimacy was originally composed for an installation, played back within a small, shadowy anteroom curtained by heavy, red velvet. It was an apt environment for the work, adding to the sense of horror-movie-like unease produced by the sudden rises and dips in volume, and the unrelenting intensity of the harder noises contained within the piece. Dealing particularly with oscillations between periods of high volume and intensity, versus extremely quiet, subdued and subliminal textures, Intimacy demands attentive, focused listening, which–although best supported by installation reception–is not strictly necessary for the sonic elements to function. Thus while Soddell’s release runs a fine line in sustaining itself within a home listening environment, it nevertheless succeeds for those listeners who might be willing to make the effort.
As with much abstract, partly subliminal work (Elizabeth Drake, Livia Ruzic etc), Soddell’s palette mysteriously segues between apparently organic sound sources or ambiences, and more electronic or radiophonic sounds: fire, water, wind, sharp bird- like cries, trains, static, and tiny electronic squeaks. However the sound is marked by consistency, by sheets and by textures, rather than by punctums or gestures. The more pointed elements act as acoustic frottage within the larger patinas from which they barely emerge.
Despite some superficial similarities, Soddell’s composition is not a ‘noise’ work in any true sense. Tightly focused repetitions and arcs are what characterise these constantly dynamic yet predictable sheets of sound. These structures and textures are too subtle to be described as ‘roiling’, yet a similar sense of constant, patterned agitation, of almost imperceptible swells and decays, mark the sonic elements. Intimacy’s more extended, quiet sections recall the work of Franc Tetaz on his most abstract, least glitch-funk infused pieces, such as The Motionless World of the Time Between (Dorobo, 1997).
It is however the turbulent seesawing between moments of near silence, sudden, loud leaps into the sonic foreground, and sustained sections of near overwhelming intensity, which are the most overt structural developments manipulated by Soddell. The interplay of levels and of thresholds of perception gives the soundscape an intense drama, creating an emotional world of growing storms, potentially catastrophic resolutions and even perhaps ecstatic transcendence. This is the music of both horror fiction and religious vision, of terror and seduction, of pleasure and pain: a fine release for the attentive listener. - Jonathan Marshall, Realtime, Earbash
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ampersand notes
Thembi Soddell has had a couple of appearances on compilations (Dorobo Document 03, Variable Resistance) and now has the short Intimacy on a new Australian label, Cajid Media (www.cajid.com, cd001). There is a note to set the volume Œwith track three at maximum loudness? which is ambiguous but means set the volume of that track to a level which you can take, at that is the maximum for the set I think. Because what Soddel works with here is dramatic contrasts; Violation starts at minimal volume, tape loop clicks with soft high tones in, gradually increasing and overlapping before, 5.5 minutes in, a rumble builds to an intense loud whooshing, the tones still in there, ending abruptly. The second piece, Withdrawl, tinkles and soft winds emerge before sudden short peaks, fading and then building to a white noise peak. Mistrust is a brief noise burst, Discomfort a burry pulse, peaked spatter assault, then industrial cycling, rain patter drops build to a rushing, falls away then back, easing to a spattering again and the Repulsion whooshes. Finally Expectation has a site recording, hollow with distant sounds, pulses then rumbles and squeaks before a voice-like rhythm that breaks up peaks and the pulses. The extremes make this a difficult listen you have to be on your toes for the changes but well worth the contemplation and focus required. - Jeremy Keens ampersand notes 2004_6
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