French sound artist Emmanuel Mieville mines the exotic for his debut album. Recording in Costa Rica, Honk Kong and Malaysia he moves well beyond any clichéd sonic tourist type representations of the locale, instead we get a far off siren, a dog barking, water running, the kind of mundane urban sounds that exist everywhere. So in effect he’ made the exotic mundane, though why someone would want to do this is quite puzzling.
Throughout the first two pieces, both recorded in Costa Rica, there’ this strange non musical banging on metal, perhaps a fence, dragging an implement across it, hitting and tinkering with it ad nauseum (it turns out it’s a sculpture the author is playing). Underneath water flows or cicadas hum, the sounds of far away engines groan and its difficult to know where to fix the attention, which layer is important. It appears to be drawing parallels between man and the natural world, though it doesn’ appear that there’ any overt statement to be made. Sounds just happen. Often there’ no pre warning or overt structural framework to understand why.
It doesn’ feel composed. Rather it feels like a giant field recording in itself, the electronic drones, cars, people talking, planes, and bugs all just part of the environment. Maybe that’s the point, that these days it’s near impossible to record the natural word without some form of human intervention. Yet even that doesn’ feel overly articulated. The cover seems to suggest a comment on modernity and the traditions, with a traditional ferry against a backdrop of sky scrapers, yet nothing is really clear. But in some sense this is the attraction to Four Wanderings in Tropical Lands. It feels like a code to be broken and raises many more questions than it answers.
Bob Baker Fish
