unter den linden – Christophe Charles | und transit – i8u on NVO
The second new release is also a split one, this time between I8U and Christophe Charles. He opens up with a piece called ‘Unter Den Linden’ and it uses various sounds of airplanes, telephone bells, a silo and a Spanish garbage truck. It lasts thirty minutes and it takes a while before it unfolds. The processing seems to be minimal here, but you’re never sure then about these sort of things. Its an alright piece of music based on field recordings, but also the best I ever heard in this field. Canada’s I8U has five pieces, which she recorded while doing a 3 months artist residency in Krems, Austria. While walking to the studio, she noticed some particular passageway at the Minoritenplatz, which seemed ‘lonely’, ignored by those who used it. She collected field recordings around the small city of Krems and did a four channel installation based on the emptiness of the passageway. These five pieces are typical of the current interests of I8U: high pitched sine waves, but not high involume, and down on the ground there are bits of low end sound. Field recordings are hard to recognize here, if at all. Here too I have the idea that I am listening to something that is actually quite good, but also not very surprising. It might be due to the fact that I8U uses a too similar approach to treating her sounds. The outcome, in both cases is however nice enough.
(FdW) Vital Weekly