Erdem Helvacioglu, oft cited as Turkeys leading contemporary exponent of electronic music and experimental guitar, opens Wounded Breath with this guise if only to confound the summation by a movement into a more immersive sound environment. Opening with The end of the World, guitar and processing dissolve and distort into long and layered controlled distortions only to be brought back to a melodic phrasing and under/over played waves of sonic textures feed out and return at variant intensity.
After this stance, the focus moves strictly towards sonic conceptualism, sharp tones, heavily processed sound, manipulated sound recordings that highlight the medium, further treatment moving it to proximity of the device itself. The sense that work in film has opened up the full possibilities of digital electronic environments is strongly conveyed beyond the point of the effectual demands of narrative towards the possible sonic worlds available to be transcribed. That narrative structure dissolves with the movement from the guitar as medium for Helvacioglu opens up a harsh edged sonic concentration. Lead Crystal Marbles, working off recordings of dropping glass marbles, highlights this approach with a gleam as the textures of manipulation change and distort eliciting differing tonal possibilities and interpretations.
Final tracks on the album, Blank mirror and Wounded Breath, are described by Helvacioglu as examinations of ‘a man. Blurred image in the mirror’ and ‘An elderly woman on her death bed’, self examination and recollections close to death respectively, leading to representations of the states of being of these two images. Existential examinations described bleakly and with a dry sonic palate laying bare its instrument and carving shards remorselessly from possible worlds may be an apt fit. Although the ability to fit narratives presented with sonic representation except as a general thematic coulouring is somewhat obscured here, if not for the vigor and intensity of the examination. Wounded Breath holding the greater of the ranges of emotional possibilities in these explorations as described by the sculptural approach to electroacousic composition laid down by Helvacioglu.
Innerversitysound
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