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Scott Smallwood/Sawako/Seth Cluett/Ben Owen/Civyiu Kkliu, "Phonography Meeting 070823"
An entire album's worth of field recordings can be a daunting proposition. As an added instrument, they often are mixed into other albums all the time to great effect, but the idea of a full album of nothing else can be intimidating, unless it involves Chris Watson.  However, this five artist/one track performance works splendidly, emphasizing the varying elements of the genre and staying compelling throughout its nearly 18 minute duration.
In the text that accompanies, which includes one piece from each artist, it's Seth Cluett’s passage that resonates with me the most.His discussion of how field recordings are catalysts for memories is definitely understandable, but they also inspire the imagination.Traditional music entertains, but it doesn’t create visualizations and speculation on how it was recorded like this sort of work does.
For this project, each artist contributed ten minutes of field recordings, with no post production, that are weaved together into a single piece.Admittedly, these aren't seamless transitions:it's pretty easy to tell where one ends and the next begins, but that also helps to emphasize each artist's unique contributions.
For example, the first segment by Scott Smallwood is an obvious recording of water running from a faucet, yet accompanied by a singular dripping sound that mimics a basic, but perceptible rhythm to give a musical counterpoint to the otherwise abstract sounds.Later on a passage of wind chimes serves a similar purpose, putting melodies in amidst the dissonance.
Seth Cluett's contribution also mixes in more traditional "music" moments, with distant bells that, panned and far enough off, sound much more like studio creations than they actually are.Sawako goes for a different facet of field recording:by capturing fragments of ghostly conversations and howling winds, an almost alien landscape is conjured, with only bits of familiarity to be recognized.
The final two pieces, courtesy of Ben Owen and Civyiu Kkliu, opt to use recordings in a completely removed, utterly abstract context.Owen's segment of distant thuds and bangs could be anything, and his later inclusion of lovely, quiet static solidified its greatness for me.Kkliu’s closer sounds like a dying PC power supply, amplified to absurd levels, and some electronic interference/breakdowns thrown in to liven things up and end the work on a noisy note.
The easy criticism to level at artists in this field is that they are not actually "creating" but just "capturing" the world, and I’m sure for some that’s a fair critique, but it does not apply here.None of these recordings sound accidental or haphazard, instead they sound like the result of careful planning and deliberate microphone placement.Whether it's creating tangible visual environments via audio, mutating the known into the unknown, or using everyday sounds to create widely diverging textures, it's all included within this album.
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