CD – Winds Measure

Organized as a transversal field recording orchestra, the combo of Scott Smallwood, Sawako, Seth Cluett, Ben Owen and Civyiu Kkliu structured this project, providing a draft of unprocessed recordings strictly localized in fractions of 10 minutes each that have been consecutively mixed by an artist in a reciprocal handover. In “Phonography Meeting” the background climax is maintained by an “ambiance” very much “in progress” but basically homogeneous, despite the plurality of sound materials included here. The result, besides being interesting and enjoyable in its particular aesthetic interpretation, obviously involves a whole series of reflections on the approach – not always similar – that brings an investigator to operating with such procedures. “Who is the composer?”, wonders Scott Smallwood, implicitly underlining how the randomness implied in any capture stimulates the sound-artist to develop a particular attentive quality. Sawako – instead – in the gentle pseudo-simplicity that is her mark, tells us how she loves to make recordings in the big parks of metropolises such as Tokyo or New York City, while Seth Cluett asks himself how much the act of recording “isn’t a form of memory in itself but a catalyzer for imagination that mirrors memory in its way of operation”. With non textual interventions (in the included booklet) Ben Owen and Civyiu Kkliu guide us to other reflections: on the visual, site-specific nature of the work of a sound artist and on the intrinsic permutational quality of the recorded material, reminding us in a Burroughsian way how cut-up techniques are redundant of poetry but can also assume the form of an exercise in exorcism referring to the emptiness of everyday life.