It's all about the frequencies. Over six minutes into 'Midnight at the Oasis' and not a lot has happened. A slightly fuzzy-edged whistling hum like the sound of an amplifier that's on and turned up but with nothing plugged into it. The occasional tweet of feedback and tapping sound from just around the corner, but nothing has presented itself. No events, no sudden moves. Slowly, as one's ear adjust to the not-quite silence like blinking to set one's night vision, sounds slowly begin to filter through. Scratches and buzzes, clicks and pops, crickets and so many insects above a lake, the faint flicker of birds chattering way off in the distance and high overhead... and so Chris Watson's 28-minute solo track evolves subtly and slowly.
This is no ordinary experimental composition: the track is an environmental recording of the time between sunset and sunrise in the Kalahari desert, compressed into a little under half an hour, the sounds and the natural rhythms of the nocturnal wildlife providing the purest of music imaginable. It's fascinating, and also strangely unsettling.
The second track, produced in collaboration with Marcus Davidson, is the 20-minute 'The Bee Symphony'. Recorded live at the University of York's Music Research Centre, the piece was devised, apparently, to 'explore the vocal harmonies between humans and honey bees'. It's a lot more interesting than it sounds: the sweetness of birdsong contrasts with an eerie, monastic chorus of wordless vocalisations that ebb and flow in a swirling, drone. The birdsong slowly fades and the hum builds, rises and falls. At times it sounds like the voices of the undead, while at others like nothing else on earth, and it's hard to imagine a sound that seems less 'of nature'.
|
'Cross-Pollination' is, unquestionably, a truly unique listening experience, and a intriguing album that suggests that originality isn't dead after all.
Chris Watson Online
Marcus Davidson Online
|
