Ea - R (Ignis, 2002)

1 Untitled (56:02)

Longue pièce de musique concrète à base de field recordings manipulés, pas de point sur lequel se focaliser, tout est dans le voyage, pas le but du voyage....

Another fine release from the Ignis Projekt label in Poland - here be Patryk Zakrocki, Viön, and Membrana marching purposely into town with their boxload of 'manipulated field recordings' and producing a highly successful modern take on musique concrete. The care and attention they put into the work is clear - what really comes across is their concern to realise a properly-composed, thought-through piece of music. A combination of chimes, tones, buzzes and many mysterious narrative fragments - footsteps on floorboards, voices, heavy passionate breathing, figures vaguely moving from one room to another, a cocktail party. Perhaps this is the soundtrack to a virtual game of Cluedo come to life; you certainly get this sense of being
inside a room-like space, but not knowing quite where you are, or where you' re going to end up next. A haunted house, with secret passages, distorting mirrors and floors that drop away. Then there's the more abstract components, a swelling ocean of 'growing harmonic noise' all around you. Much listening pleasure is afforded by these continuous, grinding noises long rumblings and groanings, all proceeding at a very slow pace and maintaining a steady tension throughout. Towards the end the piece becomes gradually more attenuated; all recognisable sound events drop away, leaving only small abstract sounds, little electronic tones and the remnants of
loop effects sadly spinning away.

Previously this Polish group had been making guitar-based ambient drone-works of some kind or other - never heard any, but there's a seven-inch on the German Drone label. Here, they use virtually no instruments - just a bunch of field recordings and found sounds from their international jaunts to Span, Norway, Morocco, Austria - plus some fragments plucked from parts of Poland. These were combined with pure electronic noises, sine waves and white noise. Then came the usual filtering and treatment work using laptops and 8-track, so that they now boast 'nothing on this record is what it seems'. Amazingly, they completed this spellbinding
semi-narrative mystery novel live in the studio in one session, with no overdubs. Perhaps this discipline is what gives r its coherence.
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