Sub Rosa

Thanasis Kaproulias, using the moniker Novi_sad, questions the intimate structure of environmental sounds created with a hypothetical “sculptural integrity” in mind. The artist presents auditive articulations whose essences somehow seem to precede the listening experience. The ear follows the intrinsic placement of the elements, which are marked by the characteristics of the places from where the sounds were “captured”. Samples of insects, cicadas, rivers and storms (recorded in the area of ancient Olympia in Greece) make up “Srebrenica”, the first of the two tracks of Inhumane Humans, a score interspersed with Morse signals and a female voice, the sad testimony of a woman repeatedly raped while pregnant during the civil war in Bosnia. The background of “Aircraft Noises” is populated by shrill and manipulated samples of aircraft engines, sounds recorded on both commercial and military flights, weaved together to produce a high tone density that is imbued with additional inserts and powerful cacophonies. The album is full of hard conjunctions, omens perhaps, that generate a distorted perception of “almost human” sounds.