Jez riley French - Field Recordings Vol.21 / Generator Pieces 2727807

Engraved Glass

Its far from an original analogy, but I tend to think of field recording in a similar manner to photography. A good recording can capture a familiar moment with skilful clarity, presenting the natural beauty of what surrounds us as an object to admire. However it can also reveal hidden detail, a moment captured and framed that maybe we hadn’t previously noticed, or something out of the normal reach of the human ear.

Along with his contemporaries, the likes of Toshiya Tsunoda, Lee Patterson and Jeph Jerman, Jez riley French’s recent work has focussed on the latter category, amplifying tiny vibrations and uncovering small details often found at the point where natural forces meet man-made objects.

The subject matter of the recordings on Field Recordings Vol.21 ticks many of the appropriate boxes for this area of music. The wire fences, hydrophone recordings and working marinas and jetties presented here are all current favourites of the modern field recordist, and so some of these recordings do sound vaguely familiar if, like me, you listen to a lot of this kind of material. Despite this however, the majority of the other-worldly sounds still grab the attention, and their capture and presentation is very well executed. Peculiarly, their form and shape occasionally resembles the familiar patterns of improvised music, drones intercepted by sharp sounds, and prickly little details nestling amongst distant, repetitious echoes. In general these recordings portray a sense of unsettling awkwardness, a feeling of slight removal from our normal perception of everyday hearing. The naturally occurring beauty of the sounds suggests we should be more comfortable with them, but their alien qualities make that difficult.

riley French can often be found improvising live with field recordings forming a part of his music alongside closely-miked objects. Here though all of the material comes straight from untreated field recordings, and it is his ability to track down sites to make recordings of such intriguing detail that transfers into the key feature of this release, the continuous state of wonder at the sounds found out there just beyond our normal listening threshold.

Generator Pieces 2727807 is a quite different album. Described by riley French as “intuitive / improvised compositions” the three compositions here were constructed during his residency at a Dundee, Scotland art gallery entitled Generator Projects from recordings he made in and around the space.

The sounds used on Onsite One the first of the three pieces vary from rain on the roof of the building to the electronic emissions of the gallery’s office equipment. Roughly speaking we are presented with a series of vaguely industrial sounding layers, mostly extended droning tracks that are brought in and out of the piece as it progresses. The way riley French builds the sounds to a considerable roar, only to peel them back slowly, revealing the details beneath is nice, like stripping wallpaper down through its various layers of colour and texture. As the track progresses on through its twenty seven minutes however this technique wears a little thin, and the basic structure of the piece doesn’t evolve enough to retain my interest.

Although beginning in a similar manner the second piece recorded onsite at the gallery is given an extra dimension as riley French added direct human input to the recordings, tapping on poles on the roof that were hooked up to microphones to bring a distant, echoing percussion to the composition. The most interesting part of the piece however comes around halfway in as a recording of external sounds from the roof begins to drift up from the lower reaches of the mix, briefly coming into the foreground as the cry of seagulls can be heard. The juxtaposition of this familiar intrusion with the abstraction of the other sounds works well, reminding the listener of the origin of the material used at the same time as reconfiguring it into new forms.

The final, much shorter track on the album blends four field recordings made away from the gallery at watery sites, local rivers and the beach at Dundee, where the crashing of waves are captured by a mic placed under the sand. Plant and animal life mix with the sounds of rushing water into a nice little piece that somehow manages to take a different, refreshing slant on what might on paper not seem the most original of subject matter. The sparkling details within this last track, Offsite kept me captivated, and ironically on this occasion I wanted the piece to last longer.

So two interesting albums of varying material that beg to be listened to carefully. These should definitely be on the shopping list of those interested in the creative use of field recordings, and probably a few other people too.

Jez riley French