Jay–Dea López — The Great Silence

“The Great Silence” is a long form piece of subtle changing field recording composition, created purely by the use of nocturnal recordings made in forest of New South Wales  Australian. Jay–Dea López is an Australian field-recordist and sound-designer. He originally trained in classical performance and composition, but he now works  purely with field recordings- both in raw and modified form.  He also owns & writes for sound art & field recording Webzine soundslikenoise.org

The point/ focus of the work is to try & recreate the sounds heard by the first western settlers in Australia in the 18th century. So López has only recorded purely natural sounds, and used them to create a dense, often detailed, and subtle shifting piece with-in this CDR.

The forty minute piece starts off with dense map of chattering insects, weaving & creaking bird or frog calls, random croaks, & building insect buzz- this is all under fed by the sound of trickling & bubbling water. As the track moves on from minute to minute, López adds in new sound elements, while slowly removing others. Clearly the elements here are composed & layered to keep ones mind interested & entrance in this shifting sort of natural noise/ drone like soup, yet it never sounds too synthetic or cut 'n' pasted in it’s intent- meaning that you feel like your taking a journey though the forest of New South Wales, and not Mr López’s field recording collection. 

As the animal, insect & bird sounds subtle shift, also the watery undertones ebb & move in a very subtle manner too- yet unlike many of the other sounds they stay present(in one form or another) though most of the track. Also from time to time we get banks of distant thunder, rain & other subtle weather sounds added into the mix too. The animal/ insect/ bird/ sounds move between clearly layered dense patterns of tone, on & off drifting waves of tone, and almost rhythmic mats of sound. On the whole the piece is most satisfying & cleverly put together, with López designing the use of sounds so you get a nice mix of wonder, atmosphere, compositional progressing, and depth of sound detail.

The CDR comes in a textured card folder, which includes a six page black & white glossy page booklet. This takes in blurred black & white night pictures, and text from López regarding the concept behind the piece, and the way  the western settlers changed the sound of the Australia’s rich natural soundtrack forever . The CDR comes in a edition of 200 copies, and is well worth tracking down if you enjoy sound-art that carefully treads the line between authentic field recording & composed soundscaping