Review | By textura
Sounds of Absence | Various artists
With so many public spaces left uninhabited by a human presence during two years of pandemic lockdowns, it makes perfect sense that Gruenrekorder, the Germany-based sound art label known for its many field recordings-oriented releases, would issue a collection exploring the concept of absence and specifically what it sounds like. That’s the question Peter Kiefer, head of the research group ARS (art research sound) at the Mainz Music School, first put to himself and then to others in order to ascertain their responses to the state-of-things. The website ARS created to collect those responses eventually, with curation handled by Wingel Mendoza and Joshua Weitzel, developed into the seventy-two-minute compilation volume fittingly titled Sounds of Absence (available in digital and CD formats). […]