2013: The year in retrospective. Part IX
–DANIEL CROKAERT–
Curator and manager of Mystery Sea and Unfathomless labels. Editor at The Field Reporter.
Summary by Daniel Crokaert
In 2013, soundwise, and more particularly related to field recordings, although I don’t want to see it as a compartmentalised niche, I could observe an irrepressible convergence of various orientations, and an intensification of the shuffle, far from a dull uniformity, nevertheless…
Whether it be by showcasing a more naturalistic approach, trying to define specific places, while emphasizing the moment of listening, or by favoring a compositional process of erratic or filmic proportion, or yet by blending all those tendencies, the intention seems to free or extricate oneself from space and time limits, and essentially to expand imaginary, to see, sense further & differently…
Sound within this context is pointing out an ocean of possibilities…
stricto sensu, physically, a vibration made of frequencies transmitted through a medium (mainly, the air), but in its more nebulous, blurred, less under control acceptation, a shaper of emotions, a sower of dreams, an open window on a vast inland with a grip on the non-verbal, and the irrational…
Sound is at the parting of the obscured ways, it traces, scrapes, associates with our memories, summons new stories, alters our perception, maintains our faculty to be filled with wonder, clarifies our link to the world, while at the same time increasing its mystery…
The road to all become listening walkers, sentient actors of a future world, prompt to catch the sublime in the transient and to remove the superfluous is still long, if not illusory… but for those getting close to, the rewards are immense…
Sound is a potent transducer…it sharpens us, shakes us up, prepares us…
It is while it proves to be elaborate matter, while it seeps into the deepest layers of our unconscious and records ghostly presences, that it comes out as the most striking…
Let’s take the time to pose, to listen to the quivering world, and it’ll whispers us things that will make us grow…
My downsized, non exhaustive “Best Of 2013” hopefully illustrates all that
TRANSCENDENTAL :
Inland. ASTOR (Kye)
Ununtrium’s Daughter. JIM HAYNES (Semperflorens)
Making A. KEITH ROWE & GRAHAM LAMBKIN (Erstwhile)
Leave/Trace. GRISHA SHAKHNES (Glistening Examples)
PIVOTAL :
Attracted By Light (Collection 7). ARTIFICIAL MEMORY TRACE
(Semperflorens)
The Garden. JUSTIN BENNETT (Unsounds)
Karren. OLIVIA BLOCK (Sedimental)
Water Mountain.
PAUL BRADLEY, JONATHAN COLECLOUGH,
HITOSHI KOJO, COLIN POTTER (Omnimemento)
Big Wad Excisions. COPPICE (Quakebasket)
Compound Form. COPPICE (Triple Bath)
Nijmegen Pulse. ALAN COURTIS & BJ NILSEN (Brombron)
Transfixed. ROBERT CURGENVEN (The Tapeworm)
Guyane…Sous La Canopée. FERNAND DEROUSSEN
(NaturOphonia)
Sub. G*PARK (23five)
TramVibration. HACO + TOSHIYA TSUNODA (Skiti)
Zones Portuaires. ERIC LA CASA & CÉDRIC PEYRONNET
(Herbal International)
Catastrophe Point #9 & #10. LETHE (Oral)
Batalha. NUNO MOLTA & MATTEO UGGERI
(Old Bicycle Records)
Between Dusk And Dawn. SABRI MEDDEB (Self-Release)
The Patient. JOSEPH CLAYTON MILLS (Entr’acte)
Cévennes. MARC & OLIVIER NAMBLARD (Kalerne)
Eye Of The Microphone. BJ NILSEN (Touch)
Temperament As Waveform.
LEE PATTERSON & VANESSA ROSSETTO (Another Timbre)
Ars Abscondita. JOÃO CASTRO PINTO (OtO)
Corridor Norte. PABLO RECHE (Impulsive Habitat)
Same Place. GIL SANSÓN & BRUNO DUPLANT
(Idealstate Recordings)
Ab-a-b. JOS SMOLDERS & YIORGIS SAKELLARIOU (Brombron)
Untitled. PHILIP SULIDAE & JAMES McDOUGALL
(Impulsive Habitat)
Isolation Matter. DAVID VÉLEZ (Impulsive Habitat)
Un Año Tranquilo. SIMON WHETHAM (3leaves)
[Daniel Crokaert]
