Greetings non-musical lovers. I took a little break over the summer holidays to catch some rays and work on my own projects...but now I'm back with some of my latest non-musical discoveries and recommendations.
And as always, if you like what you see/hear, please considering supporting these tremendous artists & labels by buying their albums and following them on Bandcamp and/or social media.
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Jana Winderen - The Blue Beyond
(Touch, 2023)
Jana Winderen is a Norway-based artist with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology. Her practice pays particular attention to audio environments and to creatures which are hard for humans to access, both physically and aurally – deep under water, inside ice or in frequency ranges inaudible to the human ear. Her work reveals the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. The audio topography of the oceans and the depth of ice crevasses are brought to the surface.
'The Blue Beyond' is her latest album. It consists of two long-form compositions, that are edits from past sound installations. Winderen is always looking to raise awareness of environmental issues and ecological change in her work, and this album is no exception.
On Track 1 ('The Art of Listening: Under Water') begins with the gentle murmur of lapping waves, swaying and swirling around...until you gradually hear the magnified sound of tiny sea creatures and plankton, scurrying and scuttling and snapping away in their frantic locomotion. Then you will hear a kind of glitchy ambient drone enter the soundscape, which perfectly complements the rapid micro-happenings of these underwater beings. Eventually the whole thing transforms into a kind of peaceful ethereal dreamscape, but this doesn't last long before things start taking a slightly darker and eerier turn...
From around the midway point of the composition, we are gradually (yet subtly) made aware of the vastness and sheer terror of the ocean. Winderen introduces some sweeping cinematic ambient music into the mix, as the mysterious rustles and groans intensify and become rather disturbing. Towards the end of the track, this cacophonous racket dies down a bit and we are left with some deep dark rumbling drones and what sounds like some kind of underwater beacon or signal, drifting through the abyss...
Winderen captured the sounds for this piece in the Atlantic Ocean in the Miami area, as well as sounds from the Barents Sea around the North Pole and the Tropical Oceans.
Track 2 ('Du Petit Risoud aux Profondeurs du Lac de Joux') consists of sounds captured in the waters of the Lac de Joux and in the Risoud forest, located in the heart of the Swiss Jura. These recordings begin with the trickling, crunching and crackling of tranquil waters against a mesmerizing backdrop of sweet melodic birdsong, deep rumbling drones, distant sussuration, airy textures and minimalistic dreamy ambience. As the track progresses, the waters gradually become larger and more dramatic sounding... aurally encapsulating the vast power and beauty of this unique landscape. You will also hear some soft, subtle chiming sounds emerging through the mix, which is rather mesmerizing...along with (what I gather to be) the droning hum an airplane passing overhead...
In the second half of the track you will hear a cacophony of various birds chirping and insects buzzing, resonating wonderfully in this natural open space. And as the track moves towards its end, you will hear deep and haunting rumbles swirling languidly through the soundscape as more and more minutiae comes to life in the foreground...painting a vivid picture of what flora and fauna might exist in this small pocket of the natural world.
'The Blue Beyond' is a beautiful and captivating sound exploration of these watery territories - both in their natural state, and the impact that us human beings have had on them. The oceanic soundscapes, wildlife recordings and liquidy atmospheres that Winderen has both captured and created on this album are simultaneously haunting and comforting. A fascinating and immersive listening experience.
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claire rousay - Both
(Second Editions, 2020)
claire rousay is a prolific L.A-based experimental musician/artist. Her music zeroes in on personal emotions and the minutiae of everyday life. She transforms and transmutes field recordings, environmental sounds, found objects and domestic paraphernalia to create abstract textural soundscapes and evoke deep emotions within the listener. She has released a large body of work (both independently and through various record labels) of many different styles - often mixing and meshing classical musical instrumentation with various forms of non-musical sound art.
'Both' is one of rousay's non-musical releases that I've been listening to lately. It consists of two long-form sound compositions.
Track 1 ('Library') begins with almost two minutes of near total silence before you start the familiar and comforting sounds of a large open library - the San Antonio Central Library in this case. I've never been to this library myself. I just know that it's huge and red and very likely beautiful inside...
Listening closely to this track, you will hear large spacious reverberations, the distant sound of human shuffling, murmured voices, squeaking footsteps, objects being moved around, occasional bell tones (an elevator perhaps?), the monotonous rumbling of the air conditioning system and some kind of faint high-frequency sine tone, which becomes more prominent as the track progresses.
Around the halfway point, you will eventually hear a deep ominous drone emerge through the mix, which gives the whole soundscape quite a tremulous effect. There's also the subtle yet noticeable increase in gathered voices and physical activity. Towards the end of the track, rousay introduces some dramatic noise elements, which gives the audio environment a slightly more haunted air, and adds a bit of strange desperation and urgency to the piece. The library sounds eventually fade away, and we are left with the lonely sound of a deep singular drone...
Track 2 ('Two Things') begins with sharp, frantic rustling noise before the unmistakable sounds of whooshing outdoor traffic enters the mix. You will hear the puttering and revving of various motor vehicles, along with sweet birdsong, barking dogs, distant hammering, snippets of human conversation, bustling city sounds, incidental street music, and various airplanes taking off. In fact, this entire piece may have been recorded at an airport runway...I'm not sure.
At around the midway point of the composition ; beautiful, delicate, plaintive piano music drifts across the soundscape, giving the piece a lovely kind of nostalgic dreaminess...whilst in the background you will hear the clattering of (possibly) some kind of cafe/restaurant environment?
The piano melodies eventually die away as you hear the dreaded sound of a police siren, juxtaposed with rhythmic shop music played through tinny speakers. In the final stretch of the piece, rousay once again introduces some slightly sinister noise/drone elements, wooden percussive sounds, unsettling metronome ticks and a brief fragment of a conversation between two individuals about what art does...
'Both' is an album of beautiful and intriguing audio collage, environmental assemblage and atmospheric sound art. It's a wonderful aural display of the sonic elements that make up the everyday spaces we inhabit, and rousay's brilliant skill and ability to mix and manipulate these sounds, and bring out the emotional quality in them. An abstract and compelling listening experience.
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Lorenzo Abattoir - Disincarnazione
(Flag Day Recordings, 2023)
Lorenzo Abattoir is a sound artist based in Torino, Italy. A key element of his work is the relationship between spiritual practices and unusual methods of audio processing, mainly focusing on the use of microphones as a medium for the amplification of an act. He explores the boundaries between sound and noise using breathing techniques, bodily sounds and different kinds of amplified objects as instruments to structures his performances.
'Disincarnazione' is his latest album, released on the Flag Day Recordings label. The sound of this album is based on non-verbal communication, and the only instruments used in these recordings are bodily instruments - breath, throat, stomach, saliva, nails. The artist's idea was to use various breathing techniques and close-contact microphones to unleash the animalistic side of self, and ''attain an incorporeal state of being''.
In these recordings you will hear a series of raw intimate bodily sounds and organically-created atmospheres. These pieces are comprised of animal-like breathing, growling, snarling, shuffling, gargling, inhalations, exhalations, sighing, scratching, clawing, rattling, rumbling and a variety of other bodily movement noises - some distinguishable, some more obscured... creating dark, haunting atmospheres within these empty audio environments. The sound and movements that the artist has created feels so physical and disturbingly intimate - it's like you're right there in the room with him.
'Disincarnazione' is a primal sound journey, and a unique, minimalistic noise experiment. These recordings conjure up the feeling of delving deeply into the self, and listening closely to its transformations and internal dialogues, and its eventual metamorphoses into an animal state. An unnerving yet cathartic listening experience.
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Jo Montgomerie - fragments of something
(Hard Return, 2023)
Jo Montgomerie is a sound designer, noise artist and music teacher living in Manchester, originally from South West Scotland. Her sound works usually combine field recordings with analogue & digital noise techniques to transport the listener to an unfamiliar and surreal audio environments. She is interested in psychoacoustics and using sound to explore mood and atmosphere.
'fragments of something' is her latest release. It consists of four different compositions - two shorter pieces, and two long-form pieces. The album was created from samples of a previous record and rendering them unrecognizable through (I imagine) various electronic manipulation techniques.
Track 1 ('view from Snell's window') begins with the sound of muted mechanisms - slowly churning and ominously swirling through the soundscape, creating a dark sinister blanket of (almost) ambient noise... along with some kind of a subtle, eerie pulse. You will also hear a deep vibrant drone throughout the piece, which almost sounds like a cello... but I have no idea what it actually is. And there's the slight glimmer of melody fighting through the mix, but I don't know if that's accidental or intentional. The track ends with a haunting wind-like rumbling noise, which fills you with the sense of foreboding...
Track 2 ('not an invitation') begins with (what sounds to me like) the rhythmic grinding sound of some kind of large, industrial metallic device, against a backdrop of ghostly white noise. This gradually builds and builds as the track progresses. The grinding becomes louder and the background noise intensifies into something rather horrific sounding, yet strangely immersive. The gathering noise ripples and shimmers and pulses away in frightening, tortured repetition.
Track 3 ('reflection/refraction') begins with rapid percussive bleeps and a kind of twisted, liquidy, electronic ambience. If you listen closely, you will also hear the eerie, subtle churning of a low-end drone in the background. In the latter half of the piece, more electronic notes emerge into the mix - dancing and drifting through the soundscape in hypnotic fashion. Some notes are left sustained and howling alone, while others mesh together into a dark, intense, dissonant cacophony...
Track 4 ('conflict revolution') begins with noise that's more akin to the opening track than those that come after. It's a swirling and mesmerizing mechanical sound - almost like an airplane engine, or an industrial air vent. It's a dense, haunting yet beautiful sound. As the track progresses, the noisescape begins to sound more threatening and mean, and a sinister steel-like drone enters the foreground of the mix. In the latter half of the piece, another repetitive spinning noise emerges, along with a loud and menacing Prurient-like drone. The album ends with a long dissolving fade out, leaving you wondering what you've just listened to...
'fragments of something' is a dark, demented and mesmerizing noise record - full of immersive sounds and fascinating sonic abstractions. Listening to this album feels like you're stuck within the internal mechanism of some huge, hideous, industrial machine ... and makes for such a mysterious and powerful listening experience.
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Ludwig Berger - photosynthetic beats – utricularia vulgaris, marais des pontins
(forms of minutiae, 2023)
Ludwig Berger is a landscape sound artist and educator. In his compositions, installations and performances, he enables intimate and playful sonic encounters with plants, animals, buildings and geological entities. In his musical work, Berger produces sonic eco-fictions with processed and synthetic sounds. He also runs the experimental label Vertical Music.
'photosynthetic beats – utricularia vulgaris, marais des pontins' focuses on the photosynthesis of aquatic plants, and the polyrhythms they produce from the oxygen bubbles released. You can read the full story and technical details of this intriguing sound experiment at the Bandcamp link below...
The album consists of two long-form sound compositions (recorded in two different ponds on a hot Swiss summer day) and a series of 12 short techno-esque persussive loops derived from these recordings.
These minimalistic recordings that Berger has captured are lively, unpredictable, mesmerizing and fascinating. Through the natural photosynthesis process, tiny oxygen bubbles detach from the plants and spiral upwards towards the surface of the pond, creating a series of polyrhythmic pinging noises, frantic ripples, rapid pulsations, erratic gurgles, watery squeaks, buzzing micro-vibrations and liquidy ambience.
At times these sounds remind me of the snapping of shrimp, or the grunting of fish... or possibly even the stridulation of crickets.
'photosynthetic beats – utricularia vulgaris, marais des pontins' is an album of strangely hypnotic sound emissions and incidental techno beats that come from such a common freshwater ecosystem. Little is actually known about plant bioacoustics, so it's pretty surreal and rather beautiful to be able to hear these unique sound recordings - so isolated and bare in the context of this wonderful ambient audio environment that Berger has skilfully created. Such a marvellous and special listening experience.
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Mark Vernon - Call Back Carousel
(Discrepant, 2023)
Mark Vernon is a Glasgow-based sound and radio artist whose practice is focused upon concepts of audio archaeology, magnetic memory and nostalgia. His solo works have been published through several different experimental labels. He also co-runs and curates Glasgow art radio station, Radiophrenia.
'Call Back Carousel' is an audio time-travelogue based on found tapes of pre-recorded commentaries from the 60s and 70s. These commentaries were originally recorded to accompany slideshows for amateur recordists and photographers, which Vernon has used to create his own audio collages and soundscapes.
The five collages that comprise this album are titled and dated according to (presumably) where and when they were originally recorded, and begin with the sound of a slide projector clicking to life.
Our journey starts at Paignton Zoo in England, 1968, where we're aurally guided through aviaries and monkey cages, and introduced to toucans, parrots and other exotic creatures with varied snippets of fractured old-timey music to accompany us along the way.
Then we're off to The Austrian Tyrol in 1972, where we're informed about the three mountain ranges, and the recommended methods of transport and suggested practicalities of getting around this provence. This is against a pretty eerie backdrop of ominous thuds, traffic noises, birdsong and brooding ambience.
After that we find ourselves in Northern Scotland in 1971, combing the long empty beaches and visiting famous castles. With all this we can hear fragments of traditional Scottish bagpipe music, public transport noises, dark drones, tranquil waters and an array of shuffling sounds, among other things.
Then we move onto the seaside port town of Torquay, England in 1969 where the narrator is commenting on what he sees from a parked caravan - the harbour, promenades, gardens, boats etc... while Vernon provides more warped old-timey music and we hear flocks of seagulls and a gathering of people having a good time, being interviewed about their jetskiing/diving experiences and their observations of the sea. Then the narrator goes off mackerel fishing...
The piece ends with some abstract sound experimentation and weird atmospherics, along with more amusing adventure anecdotes and nostalgic music.
We end our journey in Brighton, England in 1971. This composition starts in an ol' pub (we hear the familiar sounds of people drinking and talking) before quickly moving onto the seafront. The narrator comments on the picture galleries he sees by the pebbly seafront, while in the background we hear people playing on the beaches and waves gently crashing. These recordings are broken up by bursts of old carousel music and various stuttering sounds. Then the narrator takes us to the shops, and talks about some photographs he took along the way. Towards the end of the compositon, the soundscape becomes all woozy and the recordings become more distant, until the whole things fades and disentagrates into nothingness, and we're left with the lonesome sound of the slide projector idling away before finally being turned off.
'Call Back Carousel' is a nostalgic, whimsical, demented and quite melancholic sound journey through historical sites, famous landmarks, tourists spots and must-see places around the globe during a bygone era... accompanied by fragmented musical samples, audio manipulation noises and conceptual sound art experimentation. It's strange and intriguing, creepy and alluring, bittersweet and playful, haunting and amusing... a mixed bag of emotions, and also creatively adventurous, which makes for a delightful and fulfilling listening experience.
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Grant Evans - Labyrinth
(Hooker Vision, 2023)
Grant Evans is an experimental musician who lives in Georgia, US. He works primarily with electronics, acoustic instruments, field recordings and magnetic tape. He has released a large variety of works on various labels, under different aliases. He is also (alongside his wife) a member of the drone duo Quiet Evenings.
'Labyrinth' is an album consisting of two long-form experimental sound compositions that both come to exactly 14:51. It's an album in which the artist ''seeks to process long buried memory by distorting and obscuring both time and space''.
It begins with a rippling bed of tape hiss, with faint erratic bursts of noise and distant murmured voices fighting to break through the mix. This is also accompanied by ghostly drones and other unsettling sonic abstractions. As the album slowly progresses, this soundscape is constantly shifting and evolving...enticing you to come closer and listen harder. It's full of broken transmissions, fluctuating electronics, fluttering noises, dissonant tones, dark rumbles, wavering frequencies, haunting moans, spooky howls, weird pulses and eerie ambience. This barrage of sound slowly clatters and crawls its way through the twisted and claustrophobic environment that Evans has skifully created.
'Labyrinth' is a haunting album of foreboding atmospheres and spectral soundscapes. The ominous drones and abstract noise experimentation makes for a dark, unsettling and highly immersive listening experience.
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Cole Peters - Traces Blurs Signs
(Park70, 2023)
Cole Peters is a sound & visual artist based in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada). His work in sound builds on the techniques of musique concrète, field recording, and reductive synthesis. His recordings examine texture, pressure, place and time as subjects unto themselves and as scaffolds in an evolving thematic framework drawing on the natural sciences and sensory experience.
'Traces Blurs Signs' is an album of recordings that Peters made during the bleak and brutal winter of 2021-2022, when extreme snowfall trapped a lot of citizens of Winnipeg inside their homes. The album consists of four compositions - focusing on amplified sounds the artist recorded within his four walls.
Track 1 begins with the sound of mysterious scratchings and scrapings in the foreground, whilst the background is filled with a cold, ghostly, ambient wind. Along with this you will hear (what I think may be) the soft pitter-patter of rainfall or snowfall outside a windowsill. Eventually the background ambience dies away and you will hear the faint and distant sound of voices coming through a television, along with the static humming of some kind of mechanical device or environmental room noise.
Track 2 begins with a rapid yet delicate clicking and clacking noise, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of footsteps crunching through the snow. Then you will begin to gradually hear some familiar street noises - passing vehicles, murmured voices, outdoor echoes, crickets, etc... intermingled with internal goings-on and shuffling body movements. At one point I thought I could hear the sound of someone shovelling snow... As the track progresses, ambiguous drones and shimmering humming noises build and intensify, creating a rather mesmeric and (almost) musical effect.
Track 3 begins with a build up of outdoor environmental noise, along with the sound of fast falling water. Whether this is coming from a shower/sink or natural rainfall, I'm not too sure. On top of this you will hear more ampified clacking and busy human activity. Around midway through the track, the backdrop becomes a sheet of hissing static...until street sounds eventually emerge back into the mix. There's a lot going on in these outdoor sounds if you listen closely, including something metallic softly banging against a streetlight. What is undeniable is how utterly quiet the city sounds in these recordings...
Track 4 begins with dark haunting ambient drones - one of which is eerily drifting along, the other of which is shimmering and pulsating. I'm not entirely sure as to the source material for these individual sounds (other than it involves a lot of contact microphones on vibrating surfaces) nor do I understand the way they've been electronically manipulated, but it certainly makes for a cold and ominous atmosphere. After the halfway point, you will start to hear bursts of faint spectral vocal snippets and strange scratching noises. As the track nears its end, things become very quiet and introspective and somber. The only sounds to be heard are muted dissonant drones, softly swelling and receeding in a sad minimalistic melody...
'Traces Blurs Signs' is a dark, claustrophobic and stunning album of abstractly eerie soundscapes and tense atmospheres. This inspired sound work is full of intriguing field recordings, hypnotic vibrations, haunting ambience and skilful audio manipulation. A darkly beautiful and highly immersive listening experience.
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homogenized terrestrials - vibrations recovered from Tesla's apartment
(Somnimage, 2023)
Homogenized Terrestrials is the music project of prolific Illinois artist/musician Phillip Klampe, who has been melding electronica, dark ambient, drones and noise experimentations since 1986. He has released a large body of work over the years.
'vibrations recovered from Tesla's apartment' is his latest album, which is out now on the experimental sound art label Somnimage. Admittedly, I wasn't familiar with this artist's work at all prior to hearing this, but his alias and album title had me instantly intrigued. It's definitely worth reading the artist's statement/blurb at the Bandcamp link below...
As the title suggests, this album is comprised of a series of vibrations. Musically (or Non-Musically), these are dark mysterious soundscapes of creepy vibrations, ominous pulses, buzzing particles, rippling drones, ghostly flutters, strange rustlings, eerie ambient tones, mechanical clunks, unsettling crackles, shimmering chimes, dissonant feedback, shifting frequencies, mesmeric noises, vague mutterings and a plethora of swirling sonic abstractions. These tracks ebb and flow slowly and mysteriously - at times quiet and unsettling, at other times cacophonous and all out haunting.
'vibrations recovered from Tesla's apartment' is a brilliant album of tremulous vibrations, menacing ambience, doomy noise, unearthly sci-fi atmospheres and powerful sound design. Its hypnotic and intriguing soundscapes will give you a lot to hear, and a lot to fear. A dark and rewarding listening experience.
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Roberto Vodanović Čopor - Lost Weekend
(Mahorka, 2023)
Roberto Vodanović Čopor is an experimental musician & multimedial artist from Zadar, Croatia. In his music he often incorporates the sounds of nature, the sounds of cities and everyday found objects as part of the atmospheres he creates.
'Lost Weekend' is an album created from underwater hydrophone recordings and field recordings of local speech and other sounds from the island of Vis, which is the farthest inhabited island off the Croatian mainland. Čopor then added more musical and non-musical layers of sound to build upon these lush recordings, and turn them into these rich atmospheric soundscapes.
In this album you will hear beautiful waves lapping gently upon the island shores, gurgling drainways, mysterious rumbles, oceanic vibrations, banging metal, shuddering steel, squealing hinges, snippets of local Croatian conversation, the murmur of tourists, church bells chiming, religious choral singing, insects chirruping, dark ominous swells of noise, fire softly crackling, haunting reverberations of a derelict building (an abandoned marine shelter), ghostly echoes, traditional chants, boat engines chugging, and various other mechanical sounds, rattles and vibrations of marine propulsion. All of this accompanied by some minimalistic musical flourishes. There are cinematic drones, subtle synth ambience, possibly a clarinet (?) playing a rather sweet sounding melody, and finally some warped (and slightly psychedelic) guitar experimentations towards the end...
I took quite a while deciding whether this album fitted the ''non-music'' category or not, given that there's more melody in it than most albums I tend to write about... but I stopped overthinking and just did it.
'Lost Weekend' is an alluring yet unnerving album of exquisite field recordings taken from a unique place, atmospheric underwater sounds, avant-garde noise experimentation and subtle musicality. The mood constantly shifts from being light and airy to haunting and ominous - sometimes within a few seconds. It's an intriguing sonic exploration of (what seems to be) a beautiful part of the world. A very rich and rewarding listening experience.
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Ludovic Medery - L'ombre blanche
(Zappak, 2023)
Ludovic Medery is a Belgian sound artist whose work navigates between field recording, concrete music and free improvisation. He creates using a combination of acoustic and electronic devices (oftentimes mixing them together) along with obsolete/handcrafted instruments.
'L'ombre blanche' is an album comprised of sound recordings that Medery captured across 20 years of travels and walks. He then used these recordings to create compositions, with the help of tape recorders, magnetic tape and microphones.The four compositions that Medery has created for this album are subtle and beautifully vague.
Track 1 (Le port) begins with the distant and unmistakable sound of ocean waves crashing near a port, while in the foreground you will hear small objects being rubbed, scraped and squeezed together in a series of noisy bursts, squeals and flutters. These sounds are constantly changing and evolving as the track progresses. Along the way you will also hear faint snippets of human voices, seagulls and the constant yet subtle sound of the wind blowing through the soundscape. The composition ends with the drone of a motor (I'm not sure if it's a plane or a boat) against a wall of manipulated tape hiss and bird caw.
Track 2 (Friction) begins with the sound of a rapidly stuttering mechanical drone, accompanied by a variety of shuffling/scraping noises, ominous banging, manipulated voices and tape noise. Around the midway point, the intensity dies down and you will hear an assortment of soft wooden percussive hits, tiny metallic clangs and small objects being toyed around with. The latter section of the song is filled with the sound of haunting detuned singing, erratic scratches and sweet birdsong.
Track 3 (Behind The Greenhouse) begins with abstract atmospherics, resonant gong-like bangs and a variety of small noises, tiny zaps and steel rattles. The volume and intensity of the piece gradually builds as the track progresses. After a while you hear start to hear the subtle sounds of running water and splashing...and a gentle crescendo of ambient white noise to end the composition.
Track 4 (The Church) begins with the sound of a human gathering in a large building with cavernous reverberations - presumably a church. Then you will start to hear the huge undeniable chime of a church bell, along with distant organ music and more human voices, whilst the small rubbing sounds and shuffling noises continue to swirl around this abstract audio environment. From the midway point of the piece, the church sounds quieten down and things start getting louder, stranger and more frantic. In the midst of this aural wackiness, you will hear an engine starting, indistinct growling noises, frantic scratching, eerie reverberations and the album ends with the plucking of some kind of steel-stringed instrument (possibly a banjo?) and a few hollow bangs.
'L'ombre Blanche' is an album of bizarre, subtle and hypnotic audio collages, created from such humble, everyday, familiar noises... which Medery has managed to expertly mangle and manipulate into his own unique and fascinating soundscapes. Such an immersive listening experience.
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