Monat: Mai 2022

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Review | By textura
Soundscape Røst – Spaces and Species Vol I | Elin Már Øyen Vister
I haven’t visited the Røst archipelago, located 100 km west of northern Norway, but Elin Már Øyen Vister’s collection of soundscapes from the area grants me a fairly strong impression of what it would be like to do so. As I play the vinyl album (issued in a 300-copy run) and read the accompanying notes for its twelve pieces, the site’s soundworld comes vividly to life as I picture myself on one of its islands surrounded by site-specific birds flooding the air with vocalizations. […]

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Review | By Colin Lang / Musique Machine
Pressure | Markus Mehr
Markus Mehr’s newest release, Pressure, is exactly that: a sonic force pushed to extremes, both in tonality and arrangement. Dealing largely with the environmentally unfriendly phenomenon of concrete construction, Mehr’s electronic minimalism grinds each sound source and field recording down to a granular level, as acoustic metaphor for the sand that makes up a large percentage of concrete materials. Pressure perambulates through different existing architectural structures, and reflects the brutalism of their style and acts, as they stand-in for the rapidly dwindling availability of sand in the world today. […]

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Review | By Richard Allen / a closer listen
Pressure | Markus Mehr
It’s been five years since we’ve seen an album in a concrete box, the last being MYMK’s The Memory Fog. But while that one had to be broken to access the tape within, this one can be opened to find the USB stick. Pressure also joins the ranks of famous recordings using that name, the most notorious being Queen & David Bowie’s “Under Pressure,” Billy Joel’s “Pressure” and Jessica Darrow’s “Surface Pressure.” Yet while those recordings deal with the effects of pressure on the human brain, Markus Mehr has something more literal in mind: the pressure on natural resources used to create cement, including the over-mining of sand. The process uses an inordinate amount of water and energy, while the material takes a toll on the soil and can produce cracks and fissures. […]