{"id":11730,"date":"2025-08-05T12:41:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=11730"},"modified":"2025-08-05T12:41:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T11:41:21","slug":"haarvols-horizons-of-suspended-zones-reviewed-by-aural-aggravation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/?p=11730","title":{"rendered":"Haarv\u00f6l\u2019s \u201cHorizons of Suspended Zones\u201d reviewed by Aural Aggravation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Only yesterday, I expended considerable contemplation \u2013 and verbiage \u2013 on the matter of press releases, and the level of detail they contain nowadays compared to the old A4 1-sheet \u2013 which sometimes contained just a few lines under the heading and the logo. It\u2019s wasn\u2019t really a complaint, as much as an observation, although there is, sometimes at least, a sense that most of the reviewer\u2019s job has been done for them in advance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there are other ways in which the detailed press release can prove to be a double-edged sword, and this is one of them. And so it is that I\u2019m plunging into unknown territory with this release. Not in that I haven\u2019t spent many hours immersed in ambient recordings, and not that I\u2019m unaccustomed to postmodernism, in theory and its application, how it applies to the world as we experience it. But sometimes, a work is so inspired and invested in something specific, specialised, and conceptually-focused that it feels like I\u2019m not fully qualified to approach it, much less critique it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I do dive in, this is the context. Are you sitting comfortably?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the 1990s, Hakim Bey wrote a book about the then-emerging possibility of the virtual. With the lucidity for which he is known, he recognized at the time that the virtual was nothing more than a new avenue for the expansion of capitalism. He introduced the concept of temporary autonomous zones as a kind of Foucauldian heterotopia \u2014 spaces that existed only for as long as they could evade capture. Today\u2019s reality reflects a radical intensification of what Bey was referring to in the 1990s. Temporalities have changed completely. We are now almost overwhelmed by an incessant pursuit of instantaneity, accompanied by the mounting impatience it inevitably breeds.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The temporalities of sound, therefore, are naturally different too.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time must be disobeyed.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sounds of our autonomous zones aim to be the opposite of what technology offers us today: fascination and dazzle through excess \u2014 more buttons, more effects, louder\u2026 AI. These are bare sounds, defiantly rejecting the paraphernalia that surrounds them. They are simple yet perhaps carry the greatest complexity of all: turning their backs on spectacle and presenting themselves as they are: unmasked.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work is the outcome of a series of studio sessions recorded during the summer and autumn of 2024. We followed an exploratory approach grounded in clearly defined premises and a pre-conceived compositional outline shaped by three key notions that are central to us: repetition, silence, and duration.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no post-production manipulation. What you hear is what was played. Inactual by conviction, this represents an utterly contemporary mode of being. These are sounds that seek to endure as a resistant, autonomous possibility \u2014 even if only fleetingly. Suspended between silences. Those marvelous, singular, sounds that Cage taught us to hear. They are there to last for as long as they can.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title <\/em>Horizons of Suspended Zones is inspired by a book from Hakin Bey.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find that I\u2019m sitting rather less comfortably now than I was a few minutes ago. I\u2019ve never read a word by Hakim Bay. I\u2019m aware of him and his work, but have never got as far as investigating. Therefore, I\u2019m deficient. And so, in my head-swimming uncertainty, bewilderment and state of flaking confidence, I arrive at this fifty-five minute articulation of time-challenging theory\/practice feeling weak, overwhelmed. Where do I even begin? Can I relate it to my own lived experience?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I struggle, because it doesn\u2019t communicate that postmodern overlapping and disruption of the time \/ space continuum in a way that I can relate. For me, cut-ups and collage works convey how I experience life: the eternal babble of chatter and time experienced in terms of simultaneity rather than in linear terms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Zone One [stay]\u2019 is a drifting, abstract, ethereal ambient work, and while over ten and a half minutes in duration, the time simply evaporates. It drifts into \u2018Zone Out [unfamiliarly cosy]\u2019, which is appropriately titled, and I find that I do as instructed, as the slow chimes and resonant tones hover in the air like bated breath. There\u2019s a sense of suspense, that something will happen\u2026 but of course, it doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all of the detail around the concept, there\u2019s very little around the construction by comparison. But perhaps a bell chime is simply a bell chime and an echo simply an echo. But those echoes matter. I find myself wading through the echoes of time, how it passes, how we lose time. How did we get to August? How did we \u2013 my friends and I \u2013 get so old? How, how, how is the world so utterly fucked up right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each extended abstraction turns into the next, and so \u2018Zone Zero [nameless]\u2019 arrives unushered, unannounced, and unnoticed. There are whispers, the sound of the wind through rushes, and there\u2019s something dark in the atmosphere. It\u2019s only on returning to this after some time to reflect that I come to note the squared brackets in the titles. It\u2019s an unusual application of this punctuation, which is more commonly found in academic work, and which I assume isn\u2019t accidental \u2013 but why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who\u2019s read Beckett will know how painful and challenging, and, above all, how his work can be, and so \u2018Zone Lessness [with Beckett]\u2019 certainly reflects the emptiness of many of Becket\u2019s works \u2013 the sprawling nothing where there are no events, no\u2026 nothing, and how life itself bypasses us as we wait. Life, indeed, it what happens while we\u2019re making plans. It has a painful habit of passing us by. Life is not the Instagram shots or \u2018making memories\u2019 moments. It\u2019s the trip to the supermarket, it\u2019s endlessly checking your bank balance, it\u2019s the dayjob and the cooking and washing up. It\u2019s the dead moments that count for nothing. Those moments occupy the majority of time. And on this track, a low laser drone slowly undulates throughout, and over time, fades in and out, along with incidentals which allude to lighter shades, and ultimately, the nine minutes it occupies simply slip away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Zone In [landscape]\u2019 is sparse but dense, moody and atmospheric in its rumbling minimalism, and the last cut, \u2018Zone Warming [hidden]\u2019 chimes and echoes, bells ringing out into endless silence, without response, before tapering contrails of sound slowly and subtly weave their ways in and out. There are spells of silence, and the silence casts spells, and the spells float upwards in suspension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps an appreciation of the context and theoretical framing of\u00a0Horizons of Suspended Zones<\/em>\u00a0is advantageous, but it remains accessible as an abstract ambient work without that deeper comprehension. And it still feels as if there\u2019s a sadness which permeates the entirety of the album. It\u2019s by no means heavy, but it does have an emotional weight that drags the listener in, and then drags the listener down. And then leaves them\u2026 simply nowhere. Caught with their thoughts, and nowhere to take them. Christopher Nosnibor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

via Aural Aggravation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only yesterday, I expended considerable contemplation \u2013 and verbiage \u2013 on the matter of press releases, and the level of detail they contain nowadays compared to the old A4 1-sheet \u2013 which sometimes contained just a few lines under the heading and the logo. It\u2019s wasn\u2019t really a complaint, as much as an observation, although … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Haarv\u00f6l\u2019s \u201cHorizons of Suspended Zones\u201d reviewed by Aural Aggravation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[609,292],"class_list":["post-11730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-609","tag-haarvol","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11731,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11730\/revisions\/11731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cronicaelectronica.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}