Emmanuel Mieville - Four Wanderings In Tropical Lands [Baskaru - 2011]Emmanuel Mieville is a Paris born sound art composer & musique concrete sculptor whose been creating intriguing sonic emersions since 1986. “Four Wanderings In Tropical Lands" finds him mixing field recordings from four exotic lands with subtle avant composition. 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. Roger Batty
|