HOLES
all sounds borrowed from various rooms, the things that happened in them, and those that come in from outside. collected and re-arranged 2020. some recordings initially made for the Amplify 2020 series, others not.
Master: Phil Julian.
Print: Ben Owen/Middle Press.
HOLES were formed as part of a research project undertaken with support from RMIT, Melbourne.
Thank you: Philip Samartzis, Michael Graeve, Jon Abbey, Justas Pipinis, Martin Kay, Yvan Etienne, Francisco Meirino, Emily Jones, Helki Sprod, Simon Whetham, Eric La Casa, David Prescott-Steed, RMIT and everyone from Le Lieu Multiple, Poitiers.
Reviews:
Some outside sounds, captured from inside rooms… some sounds from inside rooms… so things that happened in rooms. Ah, so that must mean… um, anything? Yeah, anything. That’s no information at all. Thanks for nothin’, Sprod. We’re left to confront that actual sounds and their arrangement in chronological space.
Trying to peg the “things that happened” to generate these sounds is foolish. Tarab is skilled at capturing rich, detailed sonic events and parsing them down to just their most essential elements. But the title, “Holes”, does a lot of work in setting up the piece. On this album, sounds are separated into discrete clusters. Quick jabs of metal rattling, open-air, doors closing and machine grind are distilled to a seconds-long (or shorter!) rush, separated by pregnant silences. We can hear jumbles of metal bashing, or the seemingly random percussion of an auto repair shop, fiercely jumbled television announcers… sharing a thin border with closely-recorded footfalls, gale-force wind, an empty foyer. Sprod plays with volume mercilessly and often; a sound-event might be REAL LOUD AND UPFRONT as if it’s boxing you about the ears, then rapidly cut to the same sound but quiet and distant, then cut again to a sideways view of the same sound, all in a moment with silence on either end… one gesture describing decisive motion. I’m reminded of Fergus Kelly’s work crossed with Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock’s violent focus… the ears of a documentary filmmaker on the body of a martial arts expert. The title seems to refer to the open space that gapes around each event… and sometimes, around each individual sound. This music breathes like a living animal.