JDG - Living Underground

Cohort Records

Cohort Records from Indiana is run by the man behind Kirchenkampf, him being John D. Gore and 'Living Underground' is the first album being released under the JDG moniker. Being fairly unfamiliar with the sound of Kirchenkampf, I'm unable to make any references towards differences in sounds or conceptual approaches. So let's check this one out "as is".

The album contains four untitled tracks which all have a playtime of above 16 minutes. They're nice and slowly evolving soundscapes based on the 'Anode Urban Soundscape Series' by Robert Carlberg. And here we head into another problem, because you humble storyteller is also unfamiliar with those. It has probably something to do with the gap between Indiana and Europe, but luckily the interweb gives an idea of what this series is about.

(quote) My Anode Urban Soundscape Series (AUSS) is a series of CDRs documenting particularly-interesting environments. Unlike other "natural sound" releases which seek to record environments free of mankind - or through editing, create such an environment artificially - my series dismisses the view that all human activity is "noise pollution." We live, most of us, in human society and the natural sounds around all of us include our fellow pink apes. The sonically-rich environments presented here will yield to careful attention, but they also can be placed in the background for reading, sleeping, or simply experiencing the ambience of a different time & place. My ultimate hope is to build up a library of such urban soundscapes, allowing one to go "around the world in 80 minutes. They also explore the idea that we don't have to travel to exotic locales or witness unusual events to find something worthy of our attention."

Quite a long quote for a review, though it also triggers a basic question that comes to mind while listening to 'Living Underground', being: Why manipulate these recordings? Why did JDG choose these recordings to serve as a base for a new themed series? The original series are based on recording the truth in sound (that's how I read the quote). True ambience to be listened to as part of the listeners reality. And the Cohort website gives the advice to listen to the JDG recordings in high volume, in darkness! Strange ...

So many questions arise while listening ... This release is not for people who only accept their food bite-sized, but it is a welcome addition to the collection of someone who likes to thinks while listening.