DAVID DONOHOE & KATE CARR – A STORM AND ITS AFTERMATH
Field recordings can be an enjoyable listening experience, but at what moment can it be considered ‘music’? That, of course, depends on your personal definition and experience, but personally, I think it becomes music when the recordings get manipulated and restructured by the composer.
Like Edgar Varèse said, “Music is organized sound.”
With that definition, A Storm And Its Aftermath can definitely be seen as a musical composition. Kate Carr and David Donohoe combine field recordings from Sherkin Island in Cork (Ireland) with various instruments and with foley effects with natural materials. This way, they “re-evaluate the dynamics and limits of a storm”.
“There’s no dramatic climax. The thunder is fleeting and subdued, caught within the crossfade between anticipation and consequence.”
When exactly does a storm begin? Is it with the quietening of the birds? Is it when the first drops of rain start falling? Or if you feel the thickening of the wind?
The album title may be somewhat confusing, since this 45-minute piece focuses on the beginning of the storm and not so much on its aftermath: it takes a full half-hour before you hear the first rumble of thunder. The music (yes I think this is music) fades out in the last five minutes when suddenly the storm passes and the quiet returns …
“Thus, we’re left to reevaluate the edges that constitute the composition and its concept.”
Maybe the true aftermath begins when you finish listening to this piece?
LUDWIG BERGER / VADRET DA MORTERATSCH – CRYING GLACIER
Vadret da Morteratsch is not the name of a musician, but the name of a glacier in the Swiss Alps. The artist on this album is Ludwig Berger, “a landscape sound artist, musician, and educator whose work engages with the sonic presences of organisms and places, attuning to the diverse ways they can be perceived” – but he mentions the glacier as if it were his collaboration artist for this album.
Which, in fact, it literally was.
“Berger spent a decade visiting Morteratsch, so frequently that each time he returned, it felt like he was coming back to someone, not just something.”
“The melting ice grunts, growls, bubbles, cracks, breaks, snaps, gushes, trickles, and leaks — all in a splendid and intricate vocabulary […] Throughout the album, these voices accumulate into a thick, multi-layered, glacial noise, as if Berger invited us into the microcosm of the ice”.
In the nine (gaplessly sequenced) tracks, the glacier comes alive with incredible detail, its multiple layers presenting an adventurous, physical exploration. At some moments, like in A Kind Of Person, it is hard to imagine what these sounds are exactly and in which way they are generated by the glacier. I could almost imagine ‘Vadret’ having some rather heavy stomach issues in some of the tracks.
Of course, this album conveys a significant message. After all, the United Nations declared 2025 to be the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, to help raise awareness about the critical role of glaciers in the climate system.
An important message, because like many glaciers, the Vadret da Morteratsch is rapidly melting.
“The zone where the glacier has recently melted is like a desert”, alerts Berger, a warning embodied by
the album’s last track, which imagines the future soundscape of the Morteratsch Valley stripped of its glacier. […] Without climate protection, it is likely that Ludwig Berger’s recordings will outlive alpine glaciers.”
Crying Glacier is also the soundtrack for the film with the same name, directed by Lutz Stautner. The album is released on the Forms Of Minutiae label as the second in a series of albums dedicated to glaciers.
Available on vinyl and digital.
MANJA RISTIĆ – SARGASSUM AETERNA
Of the three albums mentioned here, Manja Ristić‘s Sargassum Aeterna is the most ‘musical’ – as in combining field recordings with instrumental drones. Manja has a lot of experience in different fields of art: as a classical violin musician, composer, and improvisational musician, creating electro-acoustic soundscapes. Her sound-related research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to sound, field recording, and experimental radio arts.
Sargassum Aeterna comes with (and tells) a story in four parts:
It is ‘set in a dystopian future—the year 2221—where today’s social and ecological contradictions have reached their most extreme conclusions. Within this future world, we witness catastrophes largely of human making: disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field, a global war (North vs. South), destructive ocean mining, and the suspension of human rights.
Amid the gloom, however, there are sanctuaries: the Scottish Isle of Arran, “home to the child-God Luka” (presumably depicted on the album cover), and the island of Mljet in the Adriatic, just southwest of Korčula, where “coralligenous species flourish, alongside insects, small mammals, and the few remaining traces of marine life.”’
The fictional tale is definitely rooted in today’s signs: “the ecological crisis, the disregard for human life in the Mediterranean and along Europe’s borders, looming imperial wars, genocides committed with impunity, the steady rise of fascism.”
But the uncanny and detailed combination of field recordings, drones, and hydrophones offers not only anxiety, but also tranquility.
“Trepidation, but also melancholia […] A sense of ominous stillness”.
Sargassum Aeterna is released on the (Greek) Rekem label, and is available in a digital and a vinyl edition.
Très sympa ces albums, j’adore ! Merci.
🙏