The relationship between landscape, pompously speaking: topography, and music could also be examined more closely. While some name their compositions after specific places or regions (Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, »The Hebrides«, Bedřich Smetana, »The Moldau«, Gerry and the Peacemakers, »Ferry Cross the Mersey« etc.), others simply go somewhere with a microphone and make their field recordings there (Chris Watson, Janek Schaefer, Annea Lockwood etc.). The »soundscapes«, as the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer called them, the acoustic identity of a place, become the dominant, if not sole, material of the music in the latter case. For their joint debut album »Recordings from the Åland Islands«, for which modular synthesiser expert Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer were inspired by a trip to the Finnish archipelago of Åland, they chose a mixed approach. Recordings of the islands or of the indispensable ferry rides on the way from one isle to the next mix with outrageously charming syntesizer surf, chord meadows and viola cloud stripes. The »handmade« music may not be directly mimetic to the environment, but it flows on a harmonic wave with it throughout, and is perfectly attuned to the landscape. This is not a completely unheard-of approach, similar hybrid forms have been around for quite a while, but Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Horner do everything right with such a well-rested certainty, without coming across as routine, that their »recordings« are euphoric in a very polite way.
Ben Frost
Scope Neglect
Mute