LP – Gruenrekorder

R. Schwarz in The Scale of Things relies on evocative and enveloping patterns, with strong explorations of natural environments. The implications of the field recordings are given room to develop, but this is balanced with musicality and a pre-arranged structure. Seven tightly worked compositions reverberate here with a particular and abstract essence that is not easy to decipher. The Viennese architect and sound artist, currently on the MAK Schindler Artists and Architects-in-Residency Program in Los Angeles, acts simultaneously on multiple levels by interacting with various field recordings, creating layers of sounds that are sometimes quite cryptic but always in balance, forming a hybrid between natural and abstract moods, between frequencies and musical composition. The narrative has an anxious quality to it and the notes imprinted are often dark and complex. We are, for example, attacked by a swarm of insects in a chamber-like environment that leaves us bewildered about the real nature of the juxtapositions. The liner notes of this refined Gruenrekorder release suggest that “nature is the only eternal humanly possible”, though the record also speaks powerfully of the random, imagined world of the artist, in an approach that echoes to some extent the sentiments of Musique concrète, with items structured in an order that is absolutely personal and unpredictable. Modular synthesizer combines with audio captures to create a vivid continuum also comprising drum beats, stepping sounds, subtle voices, electronic fragments, sonic waterfalls, emptiness, hissing, crackling as well as conventional melodies. The listening is impressive and engaging, calibrated to resolve in non-trivial and multiform ways.

 

R. Schwarz – The Scale Of Things