A Closer Listen
Do you prefer music to direct you outward or inward? Even without words of instruction, our favourite artists cause us to investigate our innermost experience, or to interrogate the world around us. Two recent albums use drones as sonic probes to chart inner and outer space. Whether directed into a building, an ocean, or the human condition, art is a kind of echolocation that pinpoints our position.
Safien Album emerged from a research residency, capturing acoustic signatures in the Safiental region of Switzerland. The process is explained on the Sound.Codes website, whilst Sarah Bahr gives a fuller account of the sites – predominantly picturesque churches. This work of sonic conservation incidentally spawned Safien Album: an evocative document that stands on its own merits. Emitted from organs, woodwind, sax, and synths, a rich congregation of drones inhabits this record. Some arrive in faint, hauntological soundscapes, scarcely crossing over into the heard realm. Others begin in a distant enclave, one extra feature of their echoing locale. Most of the album’s tracks swell through a gradual rise in volume and intensity, forming a tonal mass. “Neukirch III” mixes unstable vibrato droning with noises of human activity. Harmonics multiply into an enthralling assemblage. Electronic chirps and chitters roost in the rafters of a large space. Rhythmical, mechanical textures dominate, like an oversized automaton wound into motion. The album is not afraid to draw abrasive reverberations from its holy spaces, nor to hear echoes of industry in its rural retreats.
The pieces are bookended by the whispered sonic signature of each space. The grainy, analogue presence of the room forms part of the document. On an earlier section of the album, a sequence of pitches gives the sense of a hearing test for the church, determining which frequencies best inhabit the space. Another track offers a short expedition outside, with bells, birdsong, and distorted sax. Elsewhere, the click of organ stops, the clink of keys, and a deep, distorted presence – the poltergeist of a bass drum possessing an amplifier. Whining feedback and screeching interference form part of this album, as much as subdued organ dirges. The sacred and the spooky join together for a multi-faith service. Large grating motions are met with dissonant feedback; the tones of organ pipes fight for their rightful place amid rough-hewn electronic drones. On the final track, we visitors are seen off by a drumming and piping ritual. Behind a newfound hint of melody, something enormous and restless shifts its weight around in the darkness as we prepare to depart.
Along with synths and abstracted vocal tones, field recordings are an important building block for Susana López. Megalithic sites, underwater soundscapes, and electromagnetic waves all shape the sound of Materia Vibrante. And yet, this music rarely feels like a document of the world, nor a sound sent out into space. López’s art is in the piercing, introspective gaze, revealing the capacities of humans and our faculties. Being in the world, in all its immensity, can be understood via inner reflection of the body and spirit. This is what López seems to prompt – nowhere more successfully than on this triumphant new album. Early in the album, silken layers of human and inhuman drones form a rich channel for fleeting sounds to flow. Water babbles, whilst percussive noises lightly rattle themselves into an insectoid flurry. These channels lead to a deep, sombre ocean of drones later on the record: forever shifting, but never quite changing in its monolithic presence. Environmental noises disorient the listener: seeming far then near, turning from fluid to alarmingly metallic. Again, sound can locate a substantial presence in the darkness, just beyond sight: a large machine sinking further into the sea; something ten-legged nestled in the self, like a hermit crab inside a polished shell. It is astonishing what we find when prompted to look inward.
Though this is not a nautical or aquatic album, the sounds of water are detectable. Perhaps it is water than reflects our inner gaze back to the outer. Being in liquid flux defines both our bodies and our planet, after all. Or perhaps the sound of rushing water metaphorically evokes the flow of experience, thought, and being. The title track and shortest piece, “Materia Vibrante”, performs the album’s alchemy most visibly. It begins with the jangle of bells, a slight distortion of synth, and on-edge drones like the build-up to an unknown event. As the tones multiply, López orchestrates her unresolved factions of sound. The dispersed detritus of the inner and outer worlds are brought into shared vibration. They reach not unity or coherence, but some kind of wholeness. As always, López offers a series of opportunities for meditation and introspection, but not for easy self-congratulation. The inner landscape is much like the outer: full of discord and fissure. (Samuel Rogers)
Sat Jul 12 00:01:28 GMT 2025