Review | By Richard Allen / a closer listen
Ghostly Waters | David Vélez
David Vélez ~ The River Calder
After seeing the illustration of a cute but anguished monster, one wants to know more. Lina Velandia‘s line drawings grace the release by David Vélez, an original way to draw us into the story of the River Calder. Two months of recordings have produced three international installations to date, and now these sounds appear on a physical release. The story begins 310 million years ago during the Carboniferous period, as the River Calder was formed. Home to “amphibians such as Microsauria, Eryops, Diplocaulus, Labyrinthodontia, and Nectridea,” the basin was a hotbed of biodiversity until a “rainforest collapse” marked by a six-degree temperature drop wiped out most of its thriving population. Enter now the “ghostly elements” of the river, as captured by Vélez, and the “giant amphibian ghosts” drawn by Velandia. These creatures communicate now through the Ghostly Water. The backdrop is black, a reflection of the environment: “black water, black soil, black boulders,” the product of carbon, coal and iron. Less than a minute in, and already some strange creature is grinding, either a living creature or a fossilized remnant begging to be heard. The white noise behind the drip and flow is similar to that heard in hauntology. But why would the ghosts of the past seek to communicate with us today? Is it simply because their lives were cut short by the rainforest collapse? No, because the area eventually recovered, becoming the main source of water for a series of surrounding farms, only to be devastated once more by a series of sewage leaks. In a short period of time, millennia of progress were dissolved. […]
Review | By ROMBO Editorial Staff / Rombo Magazine
Ghostly Waters | David Vélez
David Vélez’s ‘The River Calder’ Gives Voice to an Ancient, Polluted Watershed
Colombian sound artist David Vélez spent two months recording England’s River Calder, translating 310 million years of ecological memory—from Carboniferous collapse to modern sewage leaks—into a 70-minute physical release. David Vélez’s new release does not celebrate the River Calder. It listens to what the water has absorbed: the grind of fossilized remnants, the hiss of coal-dark silt, and the spectral warnings of amphibian life that once thrived here. Built from two months of field recordings—already installed in three international spaces—the work now arrives as a physical document, its cover graced with Lina Velandia’s line drawings of grimacing, powerless creatures. The story starts 310 million years ago, during the Carboniferous period, when the river basin churned with biodiversity. A rainforest collapse, triggered by a six-degree temperature drop, then erased most of that life. Much later, agricultural runoff and sewage leaks did their own damage. Vélez treats both disruptions as audible layers, threading ancient trauma with present decay. […]