Simon Whetham - Landlocked (Gruenrekorder, 2008)

1 Landlocked 23:04


"Landlocked" comprises various recordings of water sources, recorded on a visit to Mongolia in November 2006.
The work features recordings of the holy spring in Dulaanhaan, a water run-off from a power station in Ulan Bataar, droplets of meltwater on a metal window sill and colliding ice floes amongst the sources.
Water sources were the focus of the work as Mongolia is a land that is known to be mainly arid, and landlocked by Russia to the north and China to the south.
This work is also significant, as it is all that is left of hours of recordings collected over a two week period, the rest of which were lost due to a faulty external hard drive.
Gruenrekorder

Unlike Simon Whetham I've never been to Mongolia but I believe him when he says that this massive country hasn't got much water. Wetham got struck by this and, oddly enough, all the recordings he made in Mongolia, only the water recordings survived. With these he recorded a pure soundscape piece of water flowing and various types of rain (or so it seems) and created a very nice, if not a bit short at twenty-three minutes, piece out of it. Silence, near silence and massive water sounds are mixed together into a soundpicture of a dry country. Quite nice at that, this Lopez like work.
Vital Weekly

That the latter’s release is dominated by water sounds isn’t in itself so unusual but it is when one discovers that the material comes from recordings Whetham made during a 2006 visit to Mongolia, an arid country that, caught between Russia to the North and China to the south, is completely landlocked. The EP, part of Gruenrekorder’s Field Recording Series, presents a twenty-three-minute episodic piece that moves from pure water sounds to percussive episodes (created by droplets striking a metal windowsill) and from micro-sound passages to ones where water barrels forth with crushing force (sound sources include the holy spring in Dulaanhaan, water run-off at a Ulan Bataar power station, and ice floes). The submersive Landlocked offers an interesting, almost diametric contrast to Whetham’s 2006 Ascension_Suspension EP where cable cars in the French Alps provided sound material.
Textura

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