This is the fourth album by the Australian sound artist trio Social Interiors. Their previously works were released on the strange and beautiful Extreme label. Here they each have a solo piece, with the final work on the disc a collaboration. The first, ‘Things Change Things Remain The Same’ is a hypnotic 20 minute audio collage from Rik Rue (Machines For Making Sense), who utilises Australian field recordings and found sounds and electronic processing to create an unexpectedly percussive dedication to Morocco, Paul Bowles and Bryan Gysin that slowly builds in intensity. Shane Fahey’s ‘Mound of Mounds’ was originally the audio for a video project, which works between field recordings, with gongs, using abrupt crescendos and ruptures to keep the listener continually guessing at the origin of the sound. The sound source in Julian Knowles’ drone piece ‘Silent Latitudes’, is the ‘singing’ wires built by Alan Lamb in Western Australia, where Knowles has placed resonators on the wires, which from gentle beginnings the wind must have picked up considerably as midway through the piece the denseness and texture almost become overwhelming, yet when this drops down and the wires begins to ring out softly it’s nothing short of gorgeous.
The group piece ‘Spatial Circumference’ is a recording of Coastal and Rainforest Regions on the South Coast of NSW. It appears to be multiple locations, with further elements such as synthesis integrated, yet initially behaving in a natural way, almost like a sound source from the location. However when things become repetitive or musical the whole piece changes context almost becoming a dark comment on proceedings. It’s a strange piece that integrates multiple techniques everything from abrupt ruptures to subtle integrations and is a fantastic example of the scope and rich variance of approaches you can take to working with field recordings.
Bob Baker Fish
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