I have to confess that I’m still somewhat bemused by this record and I’ve been listening to it for a few weeks now. It’s based on a very simple, and attractive, concept. Ákos Garai went to the Pilis mountain, on the Danube river outside his home city of Budapest, and took a walk. While descending, he turned on his recorder and made field recordings of trickling water and birdsong. These field recordings were then listened to and used as the inspiration for some abstract studio constructions. The disc itself inserts these manipulated, studio segments into the raw field recordings and builds their interaction over the course of a single, 50 minute track.
The description of this process makes a significant part of the packaging and throws words around like ‘meandering’, ‘auditory flow’, ‘charming’ and ‘sacred’. Perhaps it is this kind of language that is throwing me. My first reaction, particularly in the early stages of the piece, was that it felt particularly disjointed. Sections of raw field recording were given just enough time to begin being interesting, then abruptly jump cut to other sections, not allowing any to begin enveloping and drawing me in. The studio segments, likewise jump cut very suddenly, seem to have little in common with the field recordings sonically. Headphone listening rendered some of the tiny static sections very interesting, with the minute static sounds somehow feeling like they were popping in my throat. This was a nice experiential component but somehow disconnected. However, those tiny sounds then seem to re-emerge in some of the rushing water if I listen closely and pay attention to that same popping sensation, so perhaps it’s not so disconnected as I originally thought.
It isn’t until about half way through that the field and studio recordings overlap in any way yet, again, the process seems to undermine any feelings of serenity. A high pitched, alarm like sound plays out as the water and birdsong build in intensity, though drop in and out in the background. There is certainly a psychological response provoked here, but it certainly isn’t serene. When this build up suddenly cuts out, we are placed in the vicinity of the river now flowing rather than trickling, and the dread the previous section has built in my mind gives a sinister shadow to the power now audible in the flow of the water, no longer in control of the recorder. This grows palpably as the sound of the main river moves more distant yet more obviously wild, even as a new foregrounded trickling attempts to scale things back. By the conclusion of the water segments, the Danube is a menacing background roar while the up close tributary trickle is itself reaching a noisy climax. Another sharp jump cut leaves us back in calm with footsteps and the sound of the odd bird, somewhat incongruent with all that has built before.
Sometimes, the artist describing their working methods and intentions gets in the way of work that could be more powerful if the listener is left to construct their own narratives. This is definitely the case for Pilis. My own response seems to be almost diametrically opposed to Garai’s stated intentions. Without knowing his intentions, I would say the work is an impressive exploration of the power of nature over relatively helpless humans, the dread built up successfully. That Garai’s description seems to have little in common with that response leaves me then thinking that he hasn’t been very successful in achieving his own aims, and I begin to focus once again on structural nit-picking and seeing his concréte tactics as undermining the work rather than adding to it. Which is unfortunate – Pilis is definitely a successfully provocative, response inducing work. Just not in any of the manners that Garai seems to indicate.
Adrian Elmer
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