Member:
Oreb
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by Oreb)
Date:
9/8/2004
Format:
CD (Album)
One of the only things I remember from my booze-addled BA in the early 1980s was a comment made by an English Literature tutor suggesting that the best time to read poetry is when you are feeling sleepy. Then, he said, the rational mind is less likely to intrude on the construction of images and meanings which may emerge from the text. Whether or not that is the reason, it’s good advice for appreciating poetry and also for listening to this album.
The music on Spellewauerynsherde is based largely on the electronic manipulation – at times very radical, at others barely noticeable – of women’s laments from Iceland. It is remarkably haunting stuff, particularly on headphones. The laments are generally sung solo by what I think is a mezzo-soprano. A simple example of his technique is the second track. The central channel is dominated by the source recording of a stately, mournful song. A line or so into the second verse the previous verse returns, forming a duet. The earlier sample slowly moves between the speakers, never drowning out the central channel but also never becoming a mere echo. Seperated on the extremes of each channel are elongated notes from the same source, very faintly establishing a haunting environment for the main duet. This may sound confusing. In practice it’s quite beautiful.
The third piece is a more radical treatment of another song. Two or three phrases are stretched into an almost chilling soundworld. I wrote “almost” because the piece never becomes overtly threatening, despite its alien dissonance. The long fourth track is the most ambient. Elongated phrases form a windswept scene, against which brief fragments of lament emerge, scatter and re-memerge.
The album ends with a brief reminder of the first track – a rustling sound which itself leads into a reprise of the dirge from track two before fading to the ambient drone from the central track.
I have described the workings of this album in some detail, because the frankly dreadful website of the artist is of very little help, although there are some interesting - if hyperbolic - notes at the sample site I've listed. It’s a pity because this is a superb disc. Listened to with the right ears it reveals a poetry that goes beyond words, metaphors and technicalities. As good a year as this has been for music, I doubt that there will many pieces of work released which are as fine.
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