Manja Ristić — Kairos & the Dwellers

With a release title like Kairos & the Dwellers, you'd maybe expect some sort of obscure/ gloomy doo-wop band or something similar. But instead,  what we get here is a  five-track LP that blends largely water-based field recordings with simmering-to-droning electro scaping. All making for a decidedly mysterious, subtle uneasy, and at points rather creepy sound art album.

Manja Ristić is a Serbian based sound artist/ violinist, and this album came about due to her been stranded on the island of Korčula just off the coast of Croatia at the beginning of Covid Pandemic.  She walked the shores island looking for audio elements to use. Utilizing hydrophones, different types of contact microphones, and other recording set-ups to capture the sounds of the island- then with the use of simmering-to-droning electro soundscaping created the tracks with-in.

The five tracks each run between three and eleven minutes a piece- with all of them having at least one water-related element to their make-up. We open with “Greif”- here we find gentle pebbles in water tones, blended with distant metallic knockings. Underneath these initial lulling/ soothing sounds we find a sustained ringing drone, and ebbs of distant wind billows and wave crashing. Together these elements create a feeling of stark, and slightly uneasy isolation- which is of course a good place to start, with the setting/ themes of the release.

By track three “Dwellers” we are really knee-deep in uneasy & eerier disquiet. As we find persistent lapping water tones meeting insect haze hiss. Beneath this, we have this distant blend of machine-like buzzing, and more foreboding drone rises. As we get deeper into the five-minute track we hear strange female voice mumbles, and then at the very end of the track a pained female billow- really sending shivers down your spine.

By the albums final track “Blue Pine” we find a disorientating mix of different direction water washes, wood boat creaking’s, distant tolling/ metallic scapes- with a faint backbone of eerier drone simmer, with later more shrill and serrated metallic rings coming into play. Feeling like a more tense, paranoid and compact take on NWW's Salt Marie Celeste. 

All told I found Kairos & the Dwellers an effective mix of field recordings and uneasy soundscaping- not really sure the album titles fits what we have here, but I’d certainly be interested to hear more of Ms Ristić down the road.  As she certainly knows how to blend rewarding field recordings, with more subtle unsettling composition. To pick up this direct head here