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thembi soddell
Thembi Soddell’s volatile sonic worlds morph, shift, rupture and dis-rupture into filmic atmospheres with a distinctly disquieting edge. Contorted into unreal environments and luscious masses of sonic textures, her sound palate sources field recordings, instruments and electronics to be suggestive but often unidentifiable. Her compositions exploit the dynamic extremes, toying with the listeners’ sense of expectation and generating anticipatory suspense.

She does work for CD, gallery installation, and live performance, having been involved in many of Australia's major sound festivals, such as What is Music?, Liquid Architecture and The Now Now Festival of Spontaneous Music. She has twice toured Europe as part of a collaborative duo with cellist, Anthea Caddy. She is a graduate with honours in sound art from RMIT's Fine Art Department, where she has now just begun her PhD in Sound Art. She also assists in running the Australian experimental music label, Cajid Media.

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"Another standout was Thembi Soddell’s Intimacy, using surround-sound speakers in a curtained-off space. For the gallery-goer sitting on the low stool within the pitch-dark enclosure, the effect of Soddell’s layered, peak-and-trough waves of sound was absolutely cathartic." Intimacy Installation Review. Simon Sellars - Real Time 2003

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"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." Intimacy CD review by Bob Baker Fish Jan 2005 at http://www.cyclicdefrost.com

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"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 CD review. Michael Day - Sonic Arts Network

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"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'm, 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." Instance CD review in Fragmented Frequencies, Bob Baker Fish, Inpress No 890, 2 Nov 2005

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A full list of reviews click here.


last update: 02/03/10
about + discography + performance + exhibitions + listen + reviews + contact + links