Emmanuel Mieville — Four Wanderings In Tropical Lands
The field records used to create the album are taken from through-out Costa Rica, Hong Kong & Malaysia. And they taking in: city sounds, human chatter & chant, dog & animal sounds, sea & elemental textures, cars & vehicles and all manner of rich & diverse sound. Mieville subtle layers, edits and composers field recording together with his subtle avant & at times quite primal harmonic & percussive textures- these take in metal & wood sculpture texturing ‘n’ bashing, vibe or gamelan runs, subdued harmonic textures, flits of electronic matter, & genreal creative sound editing.
On offer here are five tracks in all; two taking in field recordings from Costa Rica, one takes in field recordings from Hong Kong and two taking in field recordings from Malaysia. Each track here offers up a rich, varied and times quite jarring sonic journey as Mieville layers together field recordings with his composed elements; so at times the lines between field recording & compositional matter are complete blurred. Each tracks sound picture is often quite dense/ muilt-layered, and at times becomes quite noise bound in it’s feel. Yet Mieville never lets the tracks drift out into all out chaos as he’s always cleverly & carefully guiding the tracks focus down rewarding, intriguing & exotic sound paths.
All told “Four Wanderings In Tropical Lands" is a very impressive & wholly rewarding piece of work that rewards repeat plays, & aptly blurs the lines between field recordings, avant yet atmospheric composition & sound art. I can really see this appealing way beyond the normal field recording or musique concrete crowd as Mieville builds so many rewarding, varied & at times surprising twists & turns into his work.