Fletina - Vesun

A Closer Listen

Despite having released fifteen recordings in under two and a half years, Scottish sound artist Fletina remains enigmatic, the artist’s details as smudged as their recordings and even (in most cases) their cover art.  Two of the more specific recordings, Serrof and Louise, delve into the sonic lives of swimming pools and fires, a curious diptych.  Vesun offers listeners a variety of entry points, while the cover art is a tonal sibling to that of Serrof.

The “mundane work environments” featured in Vesun speak to a fascination with ordinary sound.  From the quiet resonances of rooms to the hums of appliances and clashes of machinery, these sounds permeate our lives without drawing much attention, except when their presence becomes a nuisance.  Fletina considers them beautiful.  The title track seems to unfold in a cave, all drips and cavernous resonance, until the sound of rails enters the picture and one wonders if it was instead recorded in a mine.  “Can It Wait?” is packed with static and hiss, backed by a rhythmic clunk.  The volume rises ever so slowly, as if the field recordist is walking toward the source of a new sound.  In the closing moments, one hears both birds and motor, a dual recognition.

“Network of Pipes” blurs the line yet again, this time the sonic distance between pipes and church bells.  A further association, the unheard middle, is that most churches have organ pipes that might be played as a mallet instrument if the organists were to permit it.  The album’s longest piece, “The Copper Years,” hints again at metallic resonance, now accompanied by background chatters, just beyond comprehensibility, with voice as texture rather than a means of communication.  When an electronic alert rings, the effect is startling, as is a rush of water that sounds like applause or the other way around.  One begins to understand the common denominators of disparate sounds.

Many people take comfort in the complimentary sounds of roaring rivers and bathtubs, campfires and heaters, passing traffic and glancing rain.  By conflating the outdoor and indoor, the personal and impersonal, the cherished and the unnoticed, Fletina proposes a more attentive listening that focuses on the sonic properties of an experience.  Far too many artists tout “soundtracks to movies that don’t exist.” Fletina amplifies the soundtrack to everyday life, causing the listener to hear it in a new way.  The closing track, “Recalibration,” is an offer as well as a presentation; the abstraction of these sounds, counter-intuitively, promotes an appreciation of specificity.  (Richard Allen)