Giesela - Weiß (Gruenrekorder, 2005)

1 Holzbock
2 Baracken
3 Überfahrt
4 Adlerstraße
5 Hans-Werner
6 Azuma

The fidelity and ease of compact discs (and, subsequently, of digital audio, as embodied, or at least epitomized, by MP3s) has taken John Cage’s famous realizations about the nature of silence and turned them outward. Now that the absurdity of the concept of pure silence is commonly appreciated, we use field recordings to explore the sounds that are actually there, however remote they may be. Giesela’s Weiß doesn’t even try to make good on its enticing subtitle ("Field recordings and melodicas"), but it more than makes up for that image of a Caribbean sound art by taking raw audio and transforming it into casual soundscapes without ever fully losing the sense of the original material. The opening track, "Holzbock", is at first so near-silent you’d think we might have to wait for a subsequent recordist to wander along and make something of it, but then the creaks of an old house start up and you might find yourself pining for the calmness that had come before. "Überfahrt" uses scraps of cello to develop a lilting backdrop amid percussive punctuations. Tellingly, several of Giesela’s sources involve children. "Baracken", quietly, employs a child’s voice, before vaporizing into a suite of white noise figments, and two others, "Adlerstraße" and "Azuma", contain "textures" from a "T. Siefert Children-Soundensemble." The last of these is a delightful mix of wooden wind chimes and tertiary space tones that’s like the encapsulation of the perfect weekend morning. Together they promote a sense of wonder that’s captivating and, occasionally, more than a little scary.
e/i magazine

Luckily things fall on good ground with the last release, by Giesela, whom we met before, in Vital Weekly 523, as Giesela Rot, aka Marc Riek, the man behind the label. His release is subtitled ‘Field Recordings And Melodicas’, by which he doesn’t mean literally melodicas, but more ‘the other sounds also used and given to me by my friends’, which means sounds of a cello and children, which pop up in various tracks. Riek himself is responsible for the field recordings used here. In the six pieces these sounds are put together in a kind of microsounding way. Silent, careful, inaudible but also warm and digital. Its a release to keep your full attention with, other you’d miss out on something. Throughout the music is quite intense, even when it’s not always finding new paths to walk along. It certainly stands out from the previous two.
Vital Weekly

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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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Feu Follet - Paradis Paysan (Gruenrekorder, 2008)

1 Paradis Vespéral
2 Christina Dans Le Foin
3 La Forêt Secrète
4 Une Lumière Brille Dans Les Ténèbre
5 La Consolation De Tes Collines

"I have always considered myself a fan of big cities: Frankfurt (where I lived for five years) and Berlin were centres of inspiration for me, because they would grow and proliferate according to a fascinating logic of their own. Lately, however, I increasingly found my views challenged by what I perceive as a a pronounced incapacity for renewal on the side of the metropoles and the incredibly aluring calm and comfort offered by visits to the countryside. Of course, these fresh perspectives are at least partially rather like fantasies, influenced by books such as "Knulp" by Herman Hesse or by my own imagination. And still, a process of rethinking my position and direction had begun. ‘Paradis Paysan’ is a way of answering these questions musically, a sort of poetic excursion into the blue on an unbeaten path – ready to go wherever it would take me.

Originally, I wanted the album to be composed of several short, but interrelated pieces to differentiate it from past works. When I sent out a promo to Gruenrekorder, however, I had lazily left the tracks glued together in one piece. As it turned out, it was this what especially attracted the label: A long composition made up of several scenes, which really forces you to listen from beginning to end. Listening to it now, I think they were absolutely right in persuading me to leave the music that way."
Tobias Fischer

Say the word “Gruenrekorder” and field recordings come to mind. In that regard, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s Landscape in Metamorphoses—in essence, field recordings of India—is perfectly in keeping with the label’s reputation. Paradis Paysan, on the other hand, a recording by Tobias Fischer under the Feu Follet guise, surprises by being less a pure field outing and instead more of an ambient work. [...]

Fischer’s Feu Follet recording lists five track titles on the sleeve but presents itself as a continuous thirty-nine-minute piece. The explanation? Fischer intended Paradis Paysan to be a collection of short, interrelated pieces but when he submitted the promo to Gruenrekorder he inadvertently presented the tracks as one piece—serendipitously it turns out, as the final product is best heard as a single, fluid composition comprised of several scenes, rather than separable and interchangeable units. Conceptually driving the work is Fischer’s disenchantment with city centres such as Frankfurt and Berlin and his concomitant attraction to the calm and comfort afforded by visits to the countryside. Not surprisingly, then, the recording migrates from the busy traffic sounds (cars racing past, honking) that initially dominate to a progressively more tranquil and “pure” sound design that’s cleansed of its machine-like qualities. As traffic noises slowly recede, the soft synth tones that have also been sounding placidly grow more audible until they’re supplanted by the flute-like exhalations of a church organ at the ten-minute mark and then crackling noises (a fireplace perhaps?). The piece subsequently oscillates between the two poles with both industrial rhythms and sparkling tones emerging during the minutes following but, in essence, Paradis Paysan grows ever more delicate as it advances towards its conclusion. Liquid pools of shimmer and spectral flourishes relaxedly intermingle but the most appealing part arrives during the last quarter when the gentle tones of the church organ, slathered in nocturnal forest chatter, return. Fischer’s sensitive handling of the piece’s contents and his careful execution of its transitions help make this episodic work a captivating travelogue.
Textura

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