When Miguel A. García died in January of this year, this album was already finished. It is the second instalment of a project between Miguel and Frans de Waard (Modelbau, Kapotte Muziek, THU 20, Wieman, Vital Weekly, etc), but it had been shelved somehow. That first part was released back in 2020, and it was actually one of the early releases on Steep Gloss (#13). Now, in all honesty, I have not yet heard that release, so this review is all about this one. The difference is that Frans mixed the first one, and Miguel mixed this one. Both artists did the sound creation, and there is an elaborate text on the Bandcamp page about it. Short recap: They decided to collaborate, recorded sounds, manipulated and developed them further, and then both started mixing and creating tracks. However, when it was time to compile an album, it got stuck. But there was so much beautiful material, so they decided to do Frans’ interpretation first and Miguel’s one later. And ‘later’ is now.
The first side has one long track, no title (they’re all just named ‘one’ to ‘five’), and here the concept starts to crystallize slowly. The sounds were recorded with a magnetic pickup in the interior of machines, and now and then, knowing this little fact, you can recognize one. Or it’s your head making fun of you and making you think you recognize it. Either way, this first track is like an exploration of the whole house. Different fragments, long static noises suddenly breaking up and still a connecting layer in between the sounds. As stated earlier, an exploration where the storyteller has a defined role. Miguel, being the storyteller, you know in advance that the sounds are descriptive in nature and super focused.
Then it’s time for the other side of the cassette. Here, the playing time is divided into four separate tracks, and because of that, there is more space for dedication to the tracks. On the A-side, it’s maybe more the exploratory aspect that leads, here it’s the different ‘rooms’ and a more in- depth look at the sounds within each ‘room’. There is more happening, yet there is less change. I love this side of the cassette! The sudden noises in ‘Three’ are a welcome break in a beautiful drone-like structure, the dissonance in ‘Four’ and the noisiness of ‘Five’, yes, this makes me really, really happy.
So, to top this one off, you will find a link at the bottom. Above this review is the link to the Steep Gloss Bandcamp. Here you can see both the “Interior Sounding” releases. I myself will still check that first because, well, you kinda know how impressive I thought this one was. The link below is to an online tribute to the memory of Miguel. For this tribute, Frans created a track using the original material. It can be seen as an addition, but it isn’t; at the same time, it kind of is. That one is a free download in honor of a great guy.
https://kaarmiic.bandcamp.com/album/kaarmiic-audio-homenaje-audio-tribute-miguel-a-garc-a
Comments
Post a Comment