Researcher and sound artist Matilde Meireles focuses on using field recordings to compose about various ecosystems such as complex aquatic ecologies, the resonances of everyday objects, local neighbourhoods and the architecture of radio signals. Her work is presented in concerts, installations, record releases, community projects and academic publications. She holds a PhD in Sonic Arts from SARC (Sound and Music Interdisciplinary Research Centre) at Queen’s University Belfast.
‘Loop. And Again’ – her fourth album on Chrónica – is part of X Marks the Spot, a wider project that used sound to map specific telecommunications boxes – only those emitting an audible drone – in the city of Belfast between 2013 and 2019.
The field recordings captured from these boxes reveal the circuits and pathways that are woven in Belfast by drones and how the contacts and encounters of the people who inhabit it are articulated in this way.
These high-frequency drones are accompanied by urban noises such as car horns, water flowing through the streets, or voices wandering through the city. This ambience is subtly processed by Meireles through his electronic devices.
‘Cross Parade‘ with Fingal, Bronagh, Paul and Tullis’, which closes this album, includes some recordings that our protagonist made during her stay at Fingal, Bronagh and Paul’s house, near Cross Parade, in Belfast, as well as several trombone improvisations by Tullis Rennie that are coupled with the background drone that acts as a tapestry across the album.
Matilde Meireles shows the sounds that go unnoticed in the city, but through her sound recordings, she relays the interactions of how we inhabit the city. Guillermo Escudero
via Loop