blog.Crónica

A new release in the catalog of Portuguese label Crónica. This time music based solely on field-recordings. Marc Behrens used a mixture of recordings to create an interesting listening.

Crónica is known for its diverse catalog with electro-acoustic music, ambient, minimal music, improvised jazz and field-recordings. In their catalog you can find back a clear connection to sound-art and music for installations. With Sleppet, the new release by German composer/sound-artist Marc Behrens it is no different. In 2007 Marc Behrens went on a trip with fellow artists Chris Watson, Jana Winderen, Steve Roden, Natasha Barrett and Bjarne Kvinnsland to the Westlandet region in Norway. With field-recordings made there he created the 4 pieces we hear on his latest release Sleppet.

The four pieces on the release are named after the sources used in the music.
Sleppet (1): Seagulls and Cattle is a the opening track which starts out with seagulls screaming, just a plain recording with nothing added, until the stretching begins. Like sirens the sounds spins around in your head. A background hum from the nearby breaking waves is always there. What the cattle is doing is not clear but at points to make rumblings noises. Due to the sounds from the seagulls this piece is quite haunting. Just as if they could attack you any time. While the clean recordings continue all the time the stretched sounds seem to become longer and longer building up to a climax. Until a point where they are mixed to the back. Here the cattle finally comes out. Sounds from huge farm sheds full of animals walking around so it seems. An intense experience.
Sleppet (2-3): Avalanches, Water and Stones starts out softly with the dripping of water. Slowly the sound gets manipulated into small grains. It pops and plops. Stones begin to roll down hill. This piece stays rather calm compared with the first one. Throughout recording this piece an avalanche of rocks took place. This coincidence is mixed in well with the rest of the sounds, same as the bird twittering in the background. Due to the use of these small details the pieces are very exciting to listen to. There is always something new to discover.
Sleppet (4): Glacier is with recordings from a glacier. It starts out like the creeping and breaking of ice. With dynamic changes the piece streams on with loads of the same sounds. But when you listen carefully a lot of different recordings are added. Softly a stream of water appears increasing in volume. And where we had a rock avalanche in the previous piece, here we are treated with the sound of a collapsing glacier. From the liner-notes we learn this was happening at just a small distance from Behrens. The loud sound sets in for a new part in the piece were we move in the an ice cave where water is dripping from all the places. A very soothing sound to say the least.
Sleppet (5): Sheep and Industry is the closing piece on the album. Here we hear a continuous hum from a hydroelectric power plant. Not only the hum is used, but several other sounds from the working industry is used to create a dynamic piece. The machinery is constantly screeching, peeping and pumping. It is as if you are in the middle of the plant. Behrens plays a lot with dynamics here making it a lively piece of music. The amazing part about this piece is that if you crank up the volume in the quiet parts you can constantly hear the sounds that surround the power plant. Birds twitter, some sheep howl. In the background they are always there, but specially in these quiet moments you get aware of them. Again the details make this such a exciting listen.

Every time when you have heard a field-recordings album you think this is it, this is the end. But now, again, with Sleppet it is a pleasant surprise to hear there how diverse this soundworld can be. Marc Behrens brought a good diverse album with some expected, but mainly unexpected field-recordings. Yet another album from Crónica that shouldn’t go unnoticed. (8,5/10) Sietse van Erve

via Earlabs

Sleppet consta de dos fases. Por um lado, un ejercicio de composición realizado con sonidos concretos, y una segunda lectura que consiste en la intensidad sónica de los zumbidos, en los que el abstraccionismo nos hace discernir la realidad de los objectos sonoros.

Al analizar el proceso de escucha de Sleppet, quizás habría que discrepar sobre los tratados de los objectos musicales de Pierre Schaefer, con relacción a los postulados de la afinación o sintonización del mundo, que promulgó en su día Murray Schaefer, alegando a favor del texto escrito por Francisco López en torno a la esquizofonía y objecto sonoro como concepciones antagónicas de un mismo hecho.

“El denominado abstraccionismo del arte de los sonidos fijados es precisamente uns musicalización y, en cierto modo paradójicamente en esta comparación justo lo contrario de la abstracción tradicional em música. Es decir, uns concretización”. “Una composición musical (sin importar si está basada en paisajes sonoros o no) debe ser una acción libre en el sentido de no tener que rechazar ninguna abstracción de los elementos de la realidad, y también en el sentido de tener el completo derecho de ser auto-referencial, no teniendo que estar sujeta a un propósito pragmático tal como una respuesta — e injustificada — reintegración del oyente con el ambiente”.

Un trabajo, Sleppet, encuadrable dentro del paisaje sonoro de escucha profunda, idóneo para ser emitido en la radio, como punto de encuentro através de las ondas con la otra realidad, la que fluye de la imaginación de los oyentes. Rogelio Pereira

La foresta nei pressi di Nerben, i ghiacciai più giù a Nord, il lago di Røsskleivvatnet, la Norvegia come contenitrice di ambienti, l’isolamento umano la cui presenza ambientale amplfica i pensieri irrequieti del dentro, la Norvegia come l’avamposto sul nulla e sull’altrove.

È questo Sleppet, l’ultimo materiale della ventennale ricerca di Marc Behrens. Da questi lidi, neo-riduzionisti (riduzionisti in quanto conduttori di un macrocosmo esistente pronto al congelamento perenne) ci si era imbattuti sia con Lionel Marchetti che con Eric La Casa. L’uno alla ricerca di fratture e discontinuità dei luoghi, l’altro in ossessiva narrazione-catalogazione del sinfonico racchiuso nell’aperto.

Marc Berhens sembra invece interessato all’aperto come concetto animale, come continua permanenza dell’animalità nel processo razionale dell’ascolto e dipana una ricerca proto-acusmatica in quattro dissertazioni, che sono anche quattro inni alla sopravvivenza su prossimità zero e del contatto innaturale che c’è tra l’ascolto e la natura. È questa la grande tensione di questi materiali: più che filmare elegiaci movimenti dello spazio, Behrens sembra attraversato dall’idea di fotografare i rigurgiti, le spietatezze, i gap ambientali dei luoghi che filma, catturando l’ascoltatore con movimenti transitivi e la somiglianza di questi alle nature umane viventi (il ruscello della seconda traccia che somiglia ad un vinile in loop, i rumori della terza che sibilano come se catturassero un missile che proviene dalle galassie).

Nel mezzo di questi anfratti invisibili ed ostici, ogni tanto emerge qualche voce umana, qualche silenzio, degli strani sbalzi di pressione sonora, che ci ricordano come certi suoni siano manipolati da fili, da cervelli, e come proprio in questo caso, questi cervelli non abbiano bisogno d’inventare musiche ma solo di tenerle in bilico perpetuo, di come non ci sia bisogno di strumenti, né di molto altro, per organizzare delle forme a dir poco soprendenti col solo aiuto di Dio. (7.4/10) Salvatore Borrelli