L-C (loop-coil). DARIUS CIUTA
(Impulsive Habitat 2011)
This release is a tricky butterfly to catch and pin down. Despite several listens (it’s quite long at nigh on an hour in duration) to me it remains elusive, and that is an intriguing premise.
Whatever Darius Ciuta intended, I find myself in an open space attuned to life passing by episodically. Sometimes people chatting traverse the audible field, the occasional bicycle or two rolls by and a wind blows, sometimes quite strongly. Enhanced hearing takes over.
But I also find myself similarly positioned in time. Seemingly at a point where temporal planes meet. Indeed the method outlined in the text that accompanies L-C (loop coil) states that the piece is the sum of two recordings. One is from August 21st, 2010 when the temperature was 20°C. The second is from 17th of February 2011, and the temperature on that day was a rather chilly -20°. Both were recorded at different locations and I imagine they are superimposed.
A minimal and subtle music of extended notes and occasional plucked strings adds splashes of tone and sudden well defined incident to the largely white canvas. I can’t decide whether it’s bathed in sunlight or swathed in frost. Either way, careful listening yields scores of tiny sounds. Clicks, tings, scrapes and distant voices carried on the wind.
Functionally this wide open landscape / soundscape / timescape dilates the mind and cleans out the residue of information overload. At least that’s how I find it operates on my grey cells. At present Darius Ciuta’s L-C is my track of choice to put on when completing The Times crossword. Lateral thinking seems second nature when in the Loop-Coil.
When it’s over, I’m not quite sure exactly what I’ve heard. Mesmerizing.
-Chris Whitehead
