Tomoko Sauvage — Fischgeist
Water is a powerful element and always inspired experimental musicians to focus on all the unexpected details hidden within it. It can sink you into a trance, with its hypnotic patterns, latent static textures, gently increasing/ decreasing sound curves.
The reverberant sound signature of Sauvage’s compositions is based on echo effects and works through wave-like feedback. She also uses oppressive silence, barely perceptible noise and sonorous hum. All very gentle balanced and strict at the same time.
For Fischgeist she has recorded the water sounds with underwater microphones, which she drains into glass and porcelain bowls filled with water. She uses grains of rice, air bubbles of mineral water and the permeability of the porcelain itself, She trickled the grains of rice down into the bowls, which start to sing. Then she created wave movements with her hand, sliding her fingers along the wet edges, or let drops fall from her hands into the bowls. Effect devices and a looper pick up these subaquatic moans and create the sinusoidal soundscapes.
The album was recorded in the halls of a former canning factory in Berlin. The empty water tanks and aquariums of the factory, as well as some field recordings of the location, were used as sources for the soundscapes.
Contrary to my expectations Fishgeist is at no point relaxing or meditative avantgarde music. Especially the opener “Deluge”, as well as the last track on the album “Exit” surprised me, with its dark tonality/ texture, and eerie-to- threatening noisemaking.
The second track “Metamorphosis” really sounds like a “Fishgeist” and for me arouses associations with Japanese rituals and theatre. It is an enriching listening experience.
The tracks “Flying Vessels“ and Kinetosis Study let you easily recognize the singing bowl, but do sometimes nearly slide into boredom compared to the other pieces.
Over the release length Tomoko Sauvage succeeds in making all the sounds very differentiated - from very reduced, dull echoing electronics and ambient sounds to equally reduced percussions from her “Water Instruments”, but still sounding like a swelling, reverberating sound-structure. The complete composition envelops the listeners and captures them - or rushes past…
You have to give Fischgeist a chance to work on you. Open your mind, and these unusually calming-yet-noisy sounds will reach you through your ear, into your mind