artist: ISOBEL CLOUTER & ROB MULLENDER
title: Myths Of Origin - Sonic Ephemera From East Asia
catalog number: and/32
release year: 2008
format: CD+
status: available
title: Myths Of Origin - Sonic Ephemera From East Asia
catalog number: and/32
release year: 2008
format: CD+
status: available
REVIEWS
At long last, after a culmination of delays amounting to 3 years,
and/OAR is extremely happy to finally present a full length release
featuring "singing sand" and "booming sand" recorded in Japan and
Mongolia by British sound artists Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender.
"Singing sand", "booming sand", "whistling sand" or "barking sand"
is sand that produces sounds of either high or low frequency under
pressure. The sound emission is usually triggered by wind passing
over dunes or by walking on the sand.
Also featured are field recordings of a traditional Japanese Sawara
Matsuri festival, a Suikinkutsu (underground water zither), Uguisubari
(or Nightengale floor), Chion-in temple and Saiho-ji temple .
The recordings came about as a result of a project instigated in late
1999, which bears witness to a long held fascination with how the
environment generates and shapes culture, memory and myth. There
was no desire to conduct any scientific or anthropological field work,
but to collect a set of recordings which would serve to illustrate how
precious the sonic environment can be, and to act as founding
materials for a soundscape collection at the British Library Sound
Archive.
Track listing:
1. Sawara matsuri, Singing sand, Suikinkutsu
2. Kotohiki-hama - Kotoga-hama beaches
3. Chion-in temple, Nightingale floor, Saiho-ji temple
4. Dune ascent / descent
5. Aosigetunoer descent
6. Baoritaolegainuoer Natural Booming
7. Baoritaolegainuoer descent
8. Dune 3 descent
9. Tibetan Prayer wheels, Xiahe
The audio CD also features a PDF of extra photos pertaining to the
recordings that can be accessed on a computer, and comes
packaged in a four color digipak and a 12 page booklet.
This CD is dedicated to the memory of Professor Shigeo Miwa, whose
warm generosity and enthusiasm was invaluable to the success of
this recording project, and whose work is mentioned in an interesting
article about booming sand and the environment, a PDF of which can
be found here .
Read the and/OAR interview of Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender.
and/OAR is extremely happy to finally present a full length release
featuring "singing sand" and "booming sand" recorded in Japan and
Mongolia by British sound artists Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender.
"Singing sand", "booming sand", "whistling sand" or "barking sand"
is sand that produces sounds of either high or low frequency under
pressure. The sound emission is usually triggered by wind passing
over dunes or by walking on the sand.
Also featured are field recordings of a traditional Japanese Sawara
Matsuri festival, a Suikinkutsu (underground water zither), Uguisubari
(or Nightengale floor), Chion-in temple and Saiho-ji temple .
The recordings came about as a result of a project instigated in late
1999, which bears witness to a long held fascination with how the
environment generates and shapes culture, memory and myth. There
was no desire to conduct any scientific or anthropological field work,
but to collect a set of recordings which would serve to illustrate how
precious the sonic environment can be, and to act as founding
materials for a soundscape collection at the British Library Sound
Archive.
Track listing:
1. Sawara matsuri, Singing sand, Suikinkutsu
2. Kotohiki-hama - Kotoga-hama beaches
3. Chion-in temple, Nightingale floor, Saiho-ji temple
4. Dune ascent / descent
5. Aosigetunoer descent
6. Baoritaolegainuoer Natural Booming
7. Baoritaolegainuoer descent
8. Dune 3 descent
9. Tibetan Prayer wheels, Xiahe
The audio CD also features a PDF of extra photos pertaining to the
recordings that can be accessed on a computer, and comes
packaged in a four color digipak and a 12 page booklet.
This CD is dedicated to the memory of Professor Shigeo Miwa, whose
warm generosity and enthusiasm was invaluable to the success of
this recording project, and whose work is mentioned in an interesting
article about booming sand and the environment, a PDF of which can
be found here .
Read the and/OAR interview of Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender.
Tibetan Prayer wheels, Xiahe.
This brief (and silent) video clip pertains to track 9
This brief (and silent) video clip pertains to track 9
AQUARIUS RECORDS (JANUARY 2009)
File this one right next to your Alan Lamb discs of singing telegraph
wires and the Broken Hearted Dragonflies album on Sublime
Frequencies, as the British sound art duo of Isobel Clouter and Rob
Mullender have presented us with some seemingly implausible
recordings of 'booming sand'. These are monotone frequencies
generated by an avalanche of a sand dune under just the right
environmental conditions. Such sounds have been reported in
numerous times and places with Marco Polo recounting them on his
excursions to China, and with Charles Darwin finding similar sounds
in the deserts of Chile! At the onset of one of their recordings, we hear
Isobel huffing and puffing up to the top of a massive sand dune,
before she puts her ears to the ground (quite literally) in order to
locate the origin of the rumbling drone. Such a bracketing episode of
human presence is very useful to frame the stillness of the desert
even as the booming sound resonates through the landscape. It also
helps to distance these natural sounds from their manmade
doomscape kin of a lowslung bass slumped in subharmonic stupor
against a rumbling amplifier. Aside from these impressively heavy
recordings, Clouter and Mullender offer some additional recordings
from elsewhere in Asia: hissing textures from windswept sand
comingling with cicadas buzzing in the summer sun, and a Tibetan
prayer wheel revolving through its wooden cycles of creaks and
moans. These are good extracts of pure phonography, but pale next to
the thoroughly impressive booming sand phenomenon.
File this one right next to your Alan Lamb discs of singing telegraph
wires and the Broken Hearted Dragonflies album on Sublime
Frequencies, as the British sound art duo of Isobel Clouter and Rob
Mullender have presented us with some seemingly implausible
recordings of 'booming sand'. These are monotone frequencies
generated by an avalanche of a sand dune under just the right
environmental conditions. Such sounds have been reported in
numerous times and places with Marco Polo recounting them on his
excursions to China, and with Charles Darwin finding similar sounds
in the deserts of Chile! At the onset of one of their recordings, we hear
Isobel huffing and puffing up to the top of a massive sand dune,
before she puts her ears to the ground (quite literally) in order to
locate the origin of the rumbling drone. Such a bracketing episode of
human presence is very useful to frame the stillness of the desert
even as the booming sound resonates through the landscape. It also
helps to distance these natural sounds from their manmade
doomscape kin of a lowslung bass slumped in subharmonic stupor
against a rumbling amplifier. Aside from these impressively heavy
recordings, Clouter and Mullender offer some additional recordings
from elsewhere in Asia: hissing textures from windswept sand
comingling with cicadas buzzing in the summer sun, and a Tibetan
prayer wheel revolving through its wooden cycles of creaks and
moans. These are good extracts of pure phonography, but pale next to
the thoroughly impressive booming sand phenomenon.
WIRE (MAY 2009)
Sand dunes can be said to 'sing' when, disturbed into movement by a
combination of a prevailing wind and certain levels of humidity, they
emit sound frequencies. There are only a small number of places in
the world where the acoustic phenomenon of singing sand has been
documented. Myths Of Origin results from a trip by UK field recordists
Rob Mullender and Isobel Clouter to regions of China and Japan to try
to capture this elusive occurrence.
They managed to record a natural incidence of it in an inner
Mongolian desert, which is no small achievement, along with a
handful of other artificially induced incidences (dunes can apparently
be agitated into singing by sliding down them). The sound itself is
wonderfully rich, a dense humming frequency, shuddering with
multiple levels of sonic detail.
The recordings of the singing sand are interspersed with excerpts of
rather less elemental experiences, in monasteries, temples and
gardens. Those recorded in China somewhat tenuously attempt to
trace the influence of booming sand on the vocal traditions of the
areas in question, and the tracks recorded in Japan are "akin to sonic
postcards", as Clouter and Mullender themselves admit.
These tracks certainly divert attention towards the recordings of
booming sand, but there's a clear disconnect between the two, which
is symptomatic of the fact that Myths Of Origin wants to be a
soundscape documentary and an anthropological thesis, but can't
manage both. But this flaw isn't fatal however, and is outweighed by
the album's value as a document of a rarely encountered natural
phenomenon. (Nick Cain)
Sand dunes can be said to 'sing' when, disturbed into movement by a
combination of a prevailing wind and certain levels of humidity, they
emit sound frequencies. There are only a small number of places in
the world where the acoustic phenomenon of singing sand has been
documented. Myths Of Origin results from a trip by UK field recordists
Rob Mullender and Isobel Clouter to regions of China and Japan to try
to capture this elusive occurrence.
They managed to record a natural incidence of it in an inner
Mongolian desert, which is no small achievement, along with a
handful of other artificially induced incidences (dunes can apparently
be agitated into singing by sliding down them). The sound itself is
wonderfully rich, a dense humming frequency, shuddering with
multiple levels of sonic detail.
The recordings of the singing sand are interspersed with excerpts of
rather less elemental experiences, in monasteries, temples and
gardens. Those recorded in China somewhat tenuously attempt to
trace the influence of booming sand on the vocal traditions of the
areas in question, and the tracks recorded in Japan are "akin to sonic
postcards", as Clouter and Mullender themselves admit.
These tracks certainly divert attention towards the recordings of
booming sand, but there's a clear disconnect between the two, which
is symptomatic of the fact that Myths Of Origin wants to be a
soundscape documentary and an anthropological thesis, but can't
manage both. But this flaw isn't fatal however, and is outweighed by
the album's value as a document of a rarely encountered natural
phenomenon. (Nick Cain)
THE WATCHFUL EAR (FEBRUARY 2009)
I picked up this disc because of its inclusion of several recordings of
shifting sands, the incredible aural phenomena whereby large banks
of sand that have been set moving by gravity create a deep humming
noise. These sounds have been very rarely captured over the years,
and the recordings here are no doubt not even close to a good
replacement for hearing them live as here they are divorced from the
magnificent natural power that creates them. Still the recordings are
good and are just one part of this album which works as an audio
diary for several trips to China, Japan and Mongolia. So we don’t just
hear the singing sands, but the wash of nearby tides, the buzzing of
passing flies and the sound of the two recordists as they make their
way to assorted vantage points. At the end of one track, after the
booming sounds of the sands have passed the pair are left
discussing the event in somewhat awestruck terminology, a
charming moment. Like other and/OAR releases have done in the
past, the disc also contains PDF files of photos taken to go with the
music which is a thoughtful additional touch. I found this release to be
an interesting and pleasant listen, answering my curiosity about how
these sands might sound [they really sound nothing like you might
expect by the way]. (Richard Pinnell)
I picked up this disc because of its inclusion of several recordings of
shifting sands, the incredible aural phenomena whereby large banks
of sand that have been set moving by gravity create a deep humming
noise. These sounds have been very rarely captured over the years,
and the recordings here are no doubt not even close to a good
replacement for hearing them live as here they are divorced from the
magnificent natural power that creates them. Still the recordings are
good and are just one part of this album which works as an audio
diary for several trips to China, Japan and Mongolia. So we don’t just
hear the singing sands, but the wash of nearby tides, the buzzing of
passing flies and the sound of the two recordists as they make their
way to assorted vantage points. At the end of one track, after the
booming sounds of the sands have passed the pair are left
discussing the event in somewhat awestruck terminology, a
charming moment. Like other and/OAR releases have done in the
past, the disc also contains PDF files of photos taken to go with the
music which is a thoughtful additional touch. I found this release to be
an interesting and pleasant listen, answering my curiosity about how
these sands might sound [they really sound nothing like you might
expect by the way]. (Richard Pinnell)
JUST OUTSIDE (FEBRUARY 2009)
When Dale from and/OAR wrote that he'd like to send me a couple of
things, I asked about this disc since I'd been intrigued by Richard's
mention of it recently. I'm pretty sure I'd never actually heard "singing
sands" and maybe had only vaguely known about their existence
period. Dale kindly obliged. The disc is a set of field recordings, the
first three from Japan, the last six from China. The non-sand dune
recordings don't do so much for me --I'm not sure to what degree
they've been restructured but, aside from the attractiveness of the
sounds themselves (which is fine) I don't pick up that extra dimension
I've found in Tsunoda or, more recently, French. The dune
experiences, however, are pretty amazing, even as you understand
you're getting probably a hundredth the effect you would were you out
in the field. Essentially, cascading waves of sand on these large
dunes can set into action enormous resonance effects within the
dune itself, sounding like the Earth is deeply thrumming. Even as is,
you might not want to play this with your speakers too close to the
shelf edge. Fascinating phenomenon, even if on disc it reads perhaps
more as a cool science experiment. (Brian Olewnick)
When Dale from and/OAR wrote that he'd like to send me a couple of
things, I asked about this disc since I'd been intrigued by Richard's
mention of it recently. I'm pretty sure I'd never actually heard "singing
sands" and maybe had only vaguely known about their existence
period. Dale kindly obliged. The disc is a set of field recordings, the
first three from Japan, the last six from China. The non-sand dune
recordings don't do so much for me --I'm not sure to what degree
they've been restructured but, aside from the attractiveness of the
sounds themselves (which is fine) I don't pick up that extra dimension
I've found in Tsunoda or, more recently, French. The dune
experiences, however, are pretty amazing, even as you understand
you're getting probably a hundredth the effect you would were you out
in the field. Essentially, cascading waves of sand on these large
dunes can set into action enormous resonance effects within the
dune itself, sounding like the Earth is deeply thrumming. Even as is,
you might not want to play this with your speakers too close to the
shelf edge. Fascinating phenomenon, even if on disc it reads perhaps
more as a cool science experiment. (Brian Olewnick)
BRAIN DEAD ETERNITY (SEPTEMBER 2009)
Environment-based editions are a dime a dozen these days, trying to
discover a special item a pretty hard assignment. Fear not, though:
just walk towards Dale Lloyd’s ever-impressive and/OAR to come
across a catalogue as diverse as the various facets of human
activity, not to mention the level of touching intensity shown by some
of this label’s records over the years. This splendid work by Clouter
and Mullender was originally conceived in 1999, year in which they
decided to gather sounds that “would serve to illustrate how precious
the sonic environment can be, and to act as founding materials for a
soundscape collection at the British Library Sound Archive”. All the
pieces of this CD borrow from original recordings made in 2001 in
regions of Japan and China.
The sources of these impressions are traces of urban life and organic
reverberations perceived in different settings including temples,
private gardens, deserts and beaches. The team-mates appear to be
principally interested – as confirmed by the extremely detailed notes
of the accompanying booklet – in the phenomenon of booming sands,
which they frantically tried to capture in several occasions, mainly
during a stay in the Mongolian desert. Indeed the sounds recorded
amidst the dunes characterize the vast majority of the second half of
the program - the one where a distinctly droning nature, which
renders the acoustic landscape ominous at times, seems to prevail
as opposed to the more variegated expressions – sea waves,
children at play amidst talking folks, metallic thuds, kitchen-related
noises, squeaking objects, traffic and other assorted symptoms – that
are mostly found in the Japanese files, but also in the conclusive
episode taped at the Labrang monastery in Xiahe, largely
characterized by the creaking spinning of Tibetan prayer wheels.
Leaving details aside, what actually strikes is the way in which
Clouter and Mullender managed to seize and subsequently organize
the inherent musicality of these flashes. It’s right here that contenders
get separated from pretenders in this particular area. One thing is
sticking a microphone outside a window and finding an excuse to
release whatever happens in those sixty minutes; another is
embarking in a project of such extent and significance, a trip that is
not strictly geographic but touches the essential aspects of the
reactions that humans have when confronted with aural occurrences
that do not belong to a daily familiarity. Those responses are
fundamental in determining who we really are, as the behaviour in
front of sound is the perfect gauge for a soul’s depth and, at large, the
real value of hypothetically “sentient” entities. The amazement of the
two partners, clearly expressed at the end of “Dune 3” after having
heard marvellous murmurs, is an indicator in that sense. It shows the
degree of love for existence that is necessary to individuate a
quintessence, something that was achieved completely in this case,
unpronounced mysticism and earthly manifestations blending in
physical radiance. (Massimo Ricci)
Environment-based editions are a dime a dozen these days, trying to
discover a special item a pretty hard assignment. Fear not, though:
just walk towards Dale Lloyd’s ever-impressive and/OAR to come
across a catalogue as diverse as the various facets of human
activity, not to mention the level of touching intensity shown by some
of this label’s records over the years. This splendid work by Clouter
and Mullender was originally conceived in 1999, year in which they
decided to gather sounds that “would serve to illustrate how precious
the sonic environment can be, and to act as founding materials for a
soundscape collection at the British Library Sound Archive”. All the
pieces of this CD borrow from original recordings made in 2001 in
regions of Japan and China.
The sources of these impressions are traces of urban life and organic
reverberations perceived in different settings including temples,
private gardens, deserts and beaches. The team-mates appear to be
principally interested – as confirmed by the extremely detailed notes
of the accompanying booklet – in the phenomenon of booming sands,
which they frantically tried to capture in several occasions, mainly
during a stay in the Mongolian desert. Indeed the sounds recorded
amidst the dunes characterize the vast majority of the second half of
the program - the one where a distinctly droning nature, which
renders the acoustic landscape ominous at times, seems to prevail
as opposed to the more variegated expressions – sea waves,
children at play amidst talking folks, metallic thuds, kitchen-related
noises, squeaking objects, traffic and other assorted symptoms – that
are mostly found in the Japanese files, but also in the conclusive
episode taped at the Labrang monastery in Xiahe, largely
characterized by the creaking spinning of Tibetan prayer wheels.
Leaving details aside, what actually strikes is the way in which
Clouter and Mullender managed to seize and subsequently organize
the inherent musicality of these flashes. It’s right here that contenders
get separated from pretenders in this particular area. One thing is
sticking a microphone outside a window and finding an excuse to
release whatever happens in those sixty minutes; another is
embarking in a project of such extent and significance, a trip that is
not strictly geographic but touches the essential aspects of the
reactions that humans have when confronted with aural occurrences
that do not belong to a daily familiarity. Those responses are
fundamental in determining who we really are, as the behaviour in
front of sound is the perfect gauge for a soul’s depth and, at large, the
real value of hypothetically “sentient” entities. The amazement of the
two partners, clearly expressed at the end of “Dune 3” after having
heard marvellous murmurs, is an indicator in that sense. It shows the
degree of love for existence that is necessary to individuate a
quintessence, something that was achieved completely in this case,
unpronounced mysticism and earthly manifestations blending in
physical radiance. (Massimo Ricci)
