Montano – Subtitled (Nonwrestler)

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I once had a friend tell me that the mark of a great photographer is an ability to make you see in new ways. In particular, I think photographs have an amazing ability to highlight and immortalise small things – tiny moments and images of life can seem suddenly significant when captured by a camera. Field recordings operate in a similar way to photographs in that both have a very literal and concrete reference to the world. They present material which is found, rather than constructed. In the early days of field recording – the musique concrete experiments of Pierre Shaeffer and others – recording a sound gave the composer a unique ability to warp that sound and sever it from its “real world’ context.

Subtitled is the excellent second album from Montano, an electronic duo who began in Melbourne but now live in New Zealand. Montano’ self-titled first album consisted entirely of processed field recordings and, whilst Subtitled is still heavily invested in field recording, it broadens the palette with inclusions of traditional instruments and synthesis. The album’ great strength is that it manages to tread the line between the oblique, real world referencing of pure field recording and the deliberate dissociation of musique concrete’ total transformations. The result is a Goldilocks balancing point of sound that both depicts and highlights its found material but also suggests new dimensions to it.

The track “Undertones’ for example, begins with a fairly stark recording of a busy streetscape which is then gradually pulled into a shimmering rhythm and enveloped by layers of synthesisers. It’s a surprisingly effective technique – the familiar urban sound of the initial recording creating a sure footing which is patiently eroded by the electronic transformations. Similarly, “This Night and that Day,’ wanders unhurriedly through a train station, becoming increasingly transfixed by a chopped-up piano sample. The sounds themselves are all familiar but their synthetic sheen gives them a beautiful air of unreality.

This, too me, is the joy of such an album. In a literal sense, field recordings can’ claim any real sense of authenticity over synthesizers or any other sound (at the point of reception all of these sounds are just ones and zeros, none of them is more “real’ than any other). And yet, despite this degree of remove, field recordings function symbolically as well, suggesting memories and concrete images of life. By rendering them into a musical context these sounds take on new significance. After listening to Subtitles I took a train ride into the city, to university, and found myself fascinated by small sounds. The gentle hubbub of commuters talking or the squeal of train breaks suddenly seemed as if they might easily slip away into Montano’ synthetic sound world. Like photography can teach us to see differently, field recordings can re-teach us to hear.

Henry Andersen

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