Just for argument’s sake, there might exist a divide within the field recordings genre (assuming there is such a genre), between the ethnographic and the musical. In the first instance are those practitioners who chase the authenticity tail and try to bring their acoustic “discoveries” closer to those listeners who are at some remove from the source material. What else would merit a listen? This makes establishing any critical language around such work incredibly difficult, if not downright fatuous. In the latter category, on the other hand, are works like Pablo Discerns’ Turning Porous, an album full of in situ documentation and musical acumen.

The opener, “Alytes”, is a series of well-syncopated clicks that I swore were artificial in origin. Alas, no. These are the sounds of amphibians of the Galician region of Spain, where Discerns was on a residency, capturing sounds from the freshwater areas found there. The kind of attenuated listening required on the first track of Turning Porous is ultimately a guide of sorts for what is to come. The effect of first recognizing the mechanical or machine-drive before the organic becomes both confounding and mysterious, revealing the hidden biases of sonic engagement. “Riparian Zone” introduces the industry that is an inescapable fact of the natural world, where a threatening drone builds into a quasi-symphonic overture, only to finish by lifting the Pythagorean veil as we witness (read: hear) a microphone falling over. “Herpetophonics: Pondering” puts two-channel listening on display (binaural as we humans are), as competing croaks build into a dialogic chorus, beautifully capturing the echolalia of another species, repetitions that sound like they are on the cusp of discernible speech. And what would any good amphibian talk box be without a few mating calls? Diserens’ neologism, Herpetophonics, reemerges, this time as arousal, and things get sultry as a fugue-like communion of throaty hoots transpires over nearly 7 minutes. 

I think Turning Porous would appeal to nearly anyone who enjoys having the mechanics, vocabulary, and media of listening put front and center while encountering the non-human. In the darkness, when the frogs are trying to drown out the very artificial systems that now enable their ecosystem, there is really nothing to see. Listening is as naked as we humans can get these days.  For more info