Loren Chasse - Characters at Water Margin
Characters at the Water Margin
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From the road I can hear the leaves and branches of the tree clattering wildly on the hillock. The enormous scale of this sound seems amiss though, as I observe the relatively calm motion of the treetop. Yet, it is a windy afternoon, and I do have to pull my jacket closed and duck my head as I cross the road and climb the soggy green slope.
Once beneath the tree, almost completely sealed off from daylight, I realize it is not the wind that drums inside the canopy. Rather, downward, through a jag in a heap of roots I see that a buried stream rushes through the guts of the hillock, thundering across rock towards the water that passes beneath the bridge.
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The smell of dung in the pastures at my back, I step down into the dune.
The shadows of the tall, sharp grasses beat across the sand.
The surf of this small bay is remarkably sonorous, especially when it draws back from the gray lip of sand. I sit for a while, watching the unimpressive waves coming in from the sea. Still, the sound overwhelms this corner of sky and I feel a throb intermittently in my sternum. Shortly, flies swarm at my ankles and so I get up and head down to the waterline, finding not sand but a litter of gray and white stones. As the next wave breaks and recedes, I step forward into the water and feel that the stones like eggs roll and tumble upon the bottom.
So this is the loud mouth of such a modest landscape!
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Below the weir, the rocks are stacked as if with a purpose. If I were to move one, subtly, how might this change the shape of the water flowing down? Which vowel might ring out from the changing pockets of air?
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recorded in connemara, ireland, los cocos, mexico, lake nelson, new zealand and new smithville, pennsylvania, 2007-2008.
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Adam Sonderberg | Katherine Young – Speech Acts (2005)
Music for bassoon multiphonics and forced air.
Composed, performed, recorded, and assembled in Chicago.
Mastered by Nathan Moomaw.
Adam Sonderberg works with concrète-based forms utilizing the computer as a discreet processing and assembly tool. Sonderberg is also Co-director of the Dropp Ensemble and 1/3 of Haptic.
Katherine Young writes electroacoustic music, often using flexible forms and expressive, timbre-focused notations. As a bassoonist, Young improvises, performs new chamber music, and plays with rock bands.
In addition to their work as a duo and in various ad-hoc groupings, Sonderberg and Young previously worked together in the trio Civil War.
