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ARTIFICIAL MEMORY TRACE (AMT) - Garig Gunak Barlu (AustralOpus 1)

Format: CD
Label & Cat.Number: Unfathomless U20
Release Year: 2014
Note: SLAVEK KWI (aka A.M.T.) has again collected some incredible environmental audio & re-framed it to three long wondrous tracks (all recordings are from a national park in Northern Australia, such as: singing tree in the wind on abandoned red beach, screeching parrots, birds in the swamp, echolocation sounds of dolphins, mysterious fishsongs, ultrasonic insects, bats & barking geckos..); sounds from the best 'composer' in the world, our earth & nature ! lim. 200
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €14.00
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More Info

"GARIG (=local name) GUNAK (=land) BARLU (=deep water)

Sheltering from the heat under a singing tree on one of the endless empty meandering beaches, eyed by a crocodile – the sea is full of them. Abandoned huts and ruins of Victoria settlement give an eerie feel to this side of the peninsula. There are flat black rocks and mangroves thick with mudskippers. Further down the coast the sands are many shades of yellow, and the volcanic rocks red and burnt orange. The beaches are alive with stringy vines, washed up sea creatures, hordes of ghost crabs, the odd burst of a desert flower. Shallows hide unchartered coral reefs, crustaceans crackling like underwater fireworks. Dark blue crabs crawl under the fan of anemone tentacles.

Inland has a different feel. Soft high grasses rustle in the breeze, a white crusted earth that could be algae, and an almost dried up swamp loud with egrets and other wading birds. Screeching flocks of white corellas pass by. The bush is sparse enough to move through, sometimes opening out into a clearing where banteng have trod. There is a remote mystery to the place. The night is full of murmurs. Relentless and hypnotic choruses of insects pulsate in tandem with the rush of high-tide. And the occasional gecko barks.

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The text and titles don’t portray the sound-work. The composition doesn’t portray the location of recorded sounds. However, there is some sort of mysterious and rather incidental connection between the experience of listening within the original biotop and choice of sound-textures, pace and timing within composition. This work is first installment of australOpus epic exploring soundscapes of Australia and Tasmania.

(Slavek Kwi & Helen Blackhurst, February 2014)

Garig Gunak Barlu is a national park around the Cobourg Peninsula in the Northern Territory, Australia, 216 km northeast of Darwin." [label info]


www.unfathomless.net



"It seems as if Slavek Kwi is on a mission to release a lot of music in a short time frame. In recent months we already saw a bunch of his releases and here's another one, the first part of a series of works based on field recordings based from down under, conducted in the Harig Gunag Barlu national park and Coubourg Peninsula - Arafura sea, Arnhem land, northern territory, Australia. All of which can be found at the most northern end of Australia and not something commoners like us will easily travel too. Kwi builds up his pieces quite nicely. It's a long curve, seventy-five minutes, in three long pieces, with a linear story. In the first piece (thirty minutes) we hear lots of bird’s sounds and seemingly they are untreated, but it's put together in some collage form, slowly changing, although it seems throughout to remain untreated. In 'Coralreef' it all seems to be dealing with sea side sounds, including dolphins, washing upon the shores, and towards the end bird calls. Here it
seems as if minor treatment has been applied. In the third piece 'Nocturnabyss' there are 'ultrasonic insects sliding across the time-grid meets hypnotic chorus sprinkled by sonar of bats and barking geckos' as we read on the cover, which gives the piece a highly (computer?) treated effect, which, come to think of it, might not be the case. Maybe, other than putting a few sounds on top of each other, there is nothing computer treated about this. Maybe it's just the nature of recording that makes that this sound highly electronic? In any case, we go from the straightforward birds in the first to a more or less quite abstract electronic sounding piece in the third. I liked this piece, I must admit, but throughout I also enjoyed the narrative aspect of the entire release. Another damn fine release by one of the best composers in this field." [FdW/Vital Weekly]