artists: Various
title: It Was Ephemeral
cat: Siro700
keywords: Field Recordings / Audio-art
label: Sirona-Records
Blaming Waves’s track is a bringer of light, it slowly rises with the help of a calm fade in and transforms everything in a natural new age way. We hear the calming effects of water gliding together with a simple but effective warm repetitive melody that fits it’s ‘Echoes In Transpositions (It’s The Spirit)’ title perfectly. Blaming Waves created a bright opener for the latest Sirona Records compilation that has a concept of field-recordings that might be manipulated by the contributor’s own choice.
Music maker, writer, thinker, anarchist, dancer and all round weirdo goes back to it’s roots. The roots of sound that is, which our good friend and employee of the year ‘Alex Spalding’ knows so well from it’s private (and not so private) sound explorations. Here he brings ‘Bone Slough’ to the table, which keeps the original creepiness that made me think of his outstanding freaky release on the Smell The Stench label called ‘Mindfucking You’. I believe that this actual track is basically Alex Spalding fieldrecording his own fingers while they break in half. I like the result, but hope he will still be able to write or create music with these limp fingers. Or was it someone else their fingers?
Perfectly fitting with Alex’s work is the more spacious track of Lezet. It listens away as if Lezet is in a building estate walking down the hallway playing with the pipe-works, passing by some locals and enjoy the depth and acoustics of the architectural construction of the estate.
Noisesurfer brings a very nice piece of manipulated fieldrecordings within his ‘Fuzzy Blurred Forms’ contribution. We hear things like fireworks, birds, breezy wind and more unidentifiable sounds and creates a psychedelic show that takes things out of proportions, assigning new ways of explorations and basically seems to mangle everything into a very exciting brew of sound.
Than artist Jared C. Balogh takes the listener away to a relaxing sounding moment somewhere on planet earth. We hear the pretty tones that might come from an old music-box with a little ballerina doll dancing in circles, while at the same time someone jamming on a ukulele in the muffled background. It’s a good combination that feels to me as if we are in a bar environment around the early afternoon armed with warm sentiment.
What I love so much of all these tracks over here in this compilation, is that whatever the artist is presenting, it feels like it’s taking out of real life, lifting up some mysterious pieces of curtain to reveal moments that are maybe even more personal than clinically produced things.
I’m also presented here on this compilation with a recording of Kook Kai in Hong Kong. It’s like a memory that is now captivated for life and linked with Sirona.
Shokushu takes us by the hand for an strange walk through a lavender snowstorm. It’s like a walk on the yellow brick road of Oz that combines fantasy with a certain reality. Shokushu coughs and we roll down in a pleasant surprise of friendly fairytale music. Lovely melodies are greeting the ones that accepted this walk and the feel good vibrations that lay within them should be also considered as a lovely unexpected gift. This track makes me think that we should go out more often!
ssst! It’s time to listen to The Child King by Dave Migman. An intriguing poetic story that is told in a perfect surrounding of nature that the artist feeds through our ears.
Ars Sonor feeds the ears another form of nature, it captures a certain freshness that breaths as if we are listening to a composed flow of a soft warm breeze that makes the leaves of trees tingle in the wind.
The wind gets stronger but seems to take care of things, it cleans up the dust and rinses out our problems.
The Industrialism feeds the ears an evening of [post-new year eve atmosphere]. We hear the deep sound of thunder and lightening in the distance, combining perfectly with the explosions coming from fireworks that light up the night sky.
Doomettes is the one that brings it’s nature recordings in a more compact field. The sounds gets nicely crackled up, muffled and crunched as they fight to get heard. His guitar strings and a soft dripping rain are the obvious winner of this contest as they play freely through each-other like a calm duet. It’s a relaxing experience to be heard until the field recording gets a visitor from outer space that crashes in to the track where it leaves something electronic brewing in the grassroots of it all.
Joel nobody presents a soundscape that takes us all away for a good time traveling. We pass by the joys of music, human activities, Asian space celebrations and bombastic drumming that is adventurous and wild as the travelers themselves.
Pllxsk is a new project on the scenery. The track ‘Wild Jah’ brings a mysterious episode of sound that has the effect of visiting a Buddhist temple, with rhythm, bottles and a fine set of soft crunching crackles.
Awakened by O.S.I.S. is something that comes to me across as if an board computer of some kind of intelligent form of space craft had encountered a sparkle of life that sets of all its circuits as it slowly awakens from a long rusty sleep in deep space. It’s mechanically happy when everything is starting up successfully and it’s a nice thing to be shared with random listeners.
Almost ten minutes does it take for artist Janmeeba to get to the bus-stop. It’s a fierce and quick walk as we can join along with this field recording of pure action. The squeaky sound of the shoes or clothing that gives the tempo of the actual walking speed makes me feel as if we are dealing with an artist that has an excellent health.
A close feathered friend of mine ‘ Toxic Chicken’ records a metal gate, iron plate, slippers, dogs and stuff from the mouth.
Electronica really created a nice stimulating track that massages the brain with the help of an never ending smooth mechanical sound wave. If electric razors would sound like this, it’s users would spend their shaving time in a pretty lucid state.
iampervert is widely known for its use of melodies, and even on a prominent field-recordings compilation this artifact is not to be missed. With his lengthy and mesmerizing track ‘alexanderplatz (Sirona-Edit)’ the artist mixes recordings of it’s surroundings with alternative sentimental music. It’s like a walk through this place while viewing it through an emotional iampervert filter.
Nine Minutes In Three by mutanT.R.I. is something that triggers the slimy parts of the imagination. It could be a field recording inside the bowels of an alien life form, or something nasty that crawls from toilet to toilet. It is unclear what it is that this alien producer has captured here on it’s recording, but I’m sure it’s better to hear it than to meet it alive in person.
EugenKha brings also a personal encounter to this collection. It’s amazing that such a musical talent still gets excited by coming across a bunch of street musicians. Well of course we don’t see EugenKha’s face, but just the fact that this underground music and poetry icon has taken the time to record these street musicians just says a lot about the actual content that the recorder would like to share with us.
The ‘World Around Me’ by Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot is a track that is making me happy. The cheerful guitar loop and just all these friendly sounds that the artist had gathered around him are a recording of pure good times. Video Game Kill-Bot sounds are of the good family life with lots of sunshine. The happy dog and the cheerful bird will give everyone a most warm welcoming feeling.
Sven Meyer takes the listeners around the block and compares sides of pure nature and comfort with the sounds that humans are responsible for. It’s a good comparison and truly confronts the listener of the differences of these two sides. Which one you prefer? The car engine or the tjirping of birds?
Than it’s time for the village people’s greatest hit Y.M.C.A. .. Ah, no! 1000 times excuses! It’s artist tnioP noitamalcxE with a track called M.C.A. . It’s like listening to a specific old school piece of machinery that does one task on repeat. The sound is an excellent metronome with it’s little ‘tick’ sound that it produces. I’m sure cowboys, Indians, police-people and fireman’s could dance on it, if they are into extreme minimal dance music that is.
Everybody loves rain, it was also the most surprising thing that felt (with a few exceptions) mostly untouched by these field-recordings on this compilation. Luckily ‘copor’ brings it with its comfortable slow dripping and cleansing sound, while the artist also provides an imaginary dream world created by inter waving more thematic sounds and ambiances. The result is a ‘dream’ of a dreaming track.
would-be messiahs ‘s nitrogen narcosis is another work that listens away like experiencing a dream. It’s one drained in mystery, beauty, nature, perhaps a slight twist of danger. Bubbles,not the monkey of Michael Jackson but the true unmistakeable bubbles sound that bubble up are tickling the happy thoughts.
FRI by The Musk-rat Cult is a more traditional alternative field recording. Focused on the petite background noises, all recorded in a seemingly lo-fi approach. We hear soft appearances of a couple of birds, the artist moving around, coughing, and more homely stuff.
An artist that has been accustomed to regularly recording sounds from the environment is Consistency Nature. His work ‘Dyedushka Vodyanoy (ft. Air Conditioners, Running Water, Fridge Buzzes)’ is standing out in it’s masterful changing recordings into different perceptions. It’s as if Consistency Nature sees sound as his clay and molds it into whatever he feels like. With this work he is probably the most extreme audio manipulation that has been featured on this compilation, transforming regular home recorded sounds into something that get squeezed in all kinds of directions, but mostly comes across as a synthetic drastic form of uncounted weather phenomena mixed with what the label tagged the release with ‘audio art’.
This compilation is in general a very interesting and calm listen, lifting up curtains and revealing more the ‘behind the scenes’ and ‘personal living circumstances’ of the artists involved. Some of them give it you like it is, but most of it spice it up with listenable sweetness. The result is a interesting and very nice mix of audio that feels surely linked together. A really nice collection for people that are bored of ambient, but seek something similar with a more natural feel.
Get this free compilation over here:
https://archive.org/details/siro700VariousArtists-ItWasEphemeral
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Yeah I Know It Sucks 