Besides being one of the most eminent field recorders in the country, Philip Samartzis is a sound artist, composer and associate professor in Sculpture, Sound and Spatial Practice and teaches Sound Cultures in the Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) program at RMIT in Melbourne. He has collaborated with the likes of Bernard Parmagiani, David Brown, Oren Ambarchi, Lawrence English and more recently with percussionist Eugene Ughetti on two albums last year, stemming from Antartica recordings.
Whilst his recorded output is rather infrequent, his editions are always fascinating, with highly articulate recordings, usually with a thought provoking, even at times provocative premise.
You can read our interview with him from 2007 here, and a fascinating Cyclic Selects he did for us last year. You can also check out our review of A Futurists Cookbook, his collaboration with Daniela d’Arielli here.
This piece comes from his forthcoming album Atmosphere’s and Disturbances, which documents four weeks of field work he undertook at the High-Altitude Research Station at Jungfraujoch, Switzerland, recording an Alpine ecology under duress, caused by an increase in global temperatures.
This is what he has to say about it:
“During fieldwork I used different microphones to record a variety of acoustic, spatial, atmospheric, and vibration-based phenomena. Omnidirectional microphones registered wind, snow, and ice as well as social, material, and industrial sound emanating from the nearby train terminus and viewing platforms. Hydrophones were placed within water and ice to record geophysical sound resonating within the frozen environment of Jungfraujoch and the adjacent glacier. The recordings capture the pervasive presence of anthropogenic sound permeating throughout the landscape produced by tourists, transport operations and recreational sports. Accelerometers were attached to various surfaces and structures to record solid vibration generated by high-velocity wind, and the process of melting and freezing. The recordings produced by the accelerometers clearly express the stress and fatigue occurring within the material structure of buildings and infrastructure.”
Atmosphere’s and Disturbances will be released via Room40 on the 7th of February 2023. You can find it here.
