Here is a true piece of sound art, in all its naked glory, a "field recording" (or, in this case, a "site specific urban" field recording) created by the mysterious collective known by the apt moniker Dis.playce. Their m.o. is perfectly captured by their sonic directives, motivated by a desire to dislodge, disassociate, neé displace, the listener so much so that their very perspective is shifted, re-attenuated, seized within the grip of some coarse and provocative contexts. Habitat takes notions of phonography, musique actuelle, and musique concréte into new avenues; it in effect autopsies the very tactile nature of sound, found, invented or otherwise.
Habitat is comprised of two distinct pieces that reveal their characteristics immediately upon submersion, situating us within their vividly etched environments to such a degree that you're automatically thrust into the nooks and crannies of the recording. Each elongated piece certainly works their essences off one another, complimentarily so yet careful to reveal their own distinctive worlds. "Ian W. Coel" is built around a video installation curated (paradoxically) by a fictitious British media artist of the same name — incongruous, perhaps, but like the best free art, clarity isn't always necessary for optimal appreciation or enjoyment. What Dis.playce do here (hear?) is set up their mics to capture everything from the noises populating the space to passersby queuing about; "ambience" is reduced to alternatively rising and falling choruses of street noise, a/c units, the dull rush of neighboring traffic. At once dense yet raggedly minimalist, there are moments when palls of silence gain an almost horrific edge — there is an absolutism about these recordings that nearly make isolationism an attractive proposition. For that reason alone, this is a wholly convincing piece of tense aural unrest.
According to the booklet's notes, "Karl Ortmann" pays homage to the well-known German cartographer. Recorded in the city of Karlsruhe, Dis.playce again capture an environment in a constant state of flux: the myriad buzzes of mass transit, oddly percolating noises fleeing distant horizons, unknown persons indulging in equally unknown (mundane or not) exercises. The identity of most of the sounds simmering about is of course never fully defined, which naturally accounts for their potent and enigmatic contents. What often feels like a soundscape realized wholly within a laptop (or digital) environment — something not "real", constructed from the ethereal contours of decoded software — is made that much more palpable due to its true, or "real" origins. The entire piece gives off an air of the alien rather than the recognizable; it comes with a chuckle that after experiencing this work thusly one realizes that such an unbalancing is precisely the effect Dis.playce aim for and fully achieve.
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