artist: ERNST KAREL
title: Heard Laboratories
catalog number: and/35
release year: 2010
format: CD
status: available
title: Heard Laboratories
catalog number: and/35
release year: 2010
format: CD
status: available
Heard Laboratories is a sonic ethnography of scientific research environments
at Harvard University, made using Schoeps cardioid mics in ORTF stereo
configuration and a Sound Devices audio recorder. The sounds of equipment,
devices, and activities draw attention to the physical processes underlying
scientific research, the work underway which provides a ground for our highly
technologized society. In the name of human progress, enormous resources are
devoted to and consumed by such activities, which are both hidden and taken for
granted. Heard Laboratories brings this background to the fore.
Heard Laboratories is a largely abstract soundscape, consisting of edited
sequences of unprocessed location recordings. The liner notes list edit points,
along with descriptions of the research each laboratory is engaged in, so that the
listener may follow along and know what kind of laboratory they are hearing at any
given moment.
The work does not take a position with respect to what is documented, and neither
endorses nor criticizes the research programs of the laboratories which granted
access.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ernst Karel works with analog electronics and with location recordings, sometimes
separately, sometimes in combination, to create audio pieces that move between
the abstract and the documentary. Karel’s audio work also includes
electroacoustic improvisation and composition; fieldwork-based academic
research in the anthropology of sound; recording, mixing, and sound design for
public radio and for nonfiction film and video; solo and collaborative sound
installations; etc.
Currently music-sound collaborative projects include the long-running
electroacoustic duo EKG, the New England Phonographers Union, and other
groups. Musicians with whom Karel has performed on trumpet and/or analog
electronics include Josh Abrams, Jason Ajemian, Thomas Ankersmit, Jim Baker,
Matt Bauder, Jeb Bishop, Olivia Block, Blowhole, Alessandro Bosetti, Lucio
Capece, Cheer-Accident, Audrey Chen, Bobby Conn, Tim Daisy, Kevin Drumm,
David Grubbs, Boris Hauf, Chris Heenan, Steven Hess, Giuseppe Ielasi, Jeph
Jerman, Annette Krebs, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Helen Mirra, Toshimaru Nakamura,
Jeff Parker, Polwechsel, Gert-Jan Prins, Key Ransone, Vic Rawlings, Gino Robair,
Aram Shelton, Aiko Shimada, TV Pow, Ken Vandermark, Sabine Vogel, Weasel
Walter, Otomo Yoshihide, Michael Zerang, and others.
Karel has mastered CD releases by Born Heller, Dragons 1976, Josephine Foster,
the Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio, Matmos, Helen Mirra, Brendan Murray, Skeletons
Out, Howard Stelzer, and others, and remastered classic releases for CD by Tod
Dockstader, Gamelan Son of Lion, Ilhan Mimaroglu, David Nzomo, Kenneth
Patchen, Ramon Sender, and others.
Karel currently manages the Sensory Ethnography Lab and the Film Study Center
at Harvard University, where as Lecturer on Anthropology, he also co-teaches
courses in media archaeology and ethnographic audio and video production.
at Harvard University, made using Schoeps cardioid mics in ORTF stereo
configuration and a Sound Devices audio recorder. The sounds of equipment,
devices, and activities draw attention to the physical processes underlying
scientific research, the work underway which provides a ground for our highly
technologized society. In the name of human progress, enormous resources are
devoted to and consumed by such activities, which are both hidden and taken for
granted. Heard Laboratories brings this background to the fore.
Heard Laboratories is a largely abstract soundscape, consisting of edited
sequences of unprocessed location recordings. The liner notes list edit points,
along with descriptions of the research each laboratory is engaged in, so that the
listener may follow along and know what kind of laboratory they are hearing at any
given moment.
The work does not take a position with respect to what is documented, and neither
endorses nor criticizes the research programs of the laboratories which granted
access.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ernst Karel works with analog electronics and with location recordings, sometimes
separately, sometimes in combination, to create audio pieces that move between
the abstract and the documentary. Karel’s audio work also includes
electroacoustic improvisation and composition; fieldwork-based academic
research in the anthropology of sound; recording, mixing, and sound design for
public radio and for nonfiction film and video; solo and collaborative sound
installations; etc.
Currently music-sound collaborative projects include the long-running
electroacoustic duo EKG, the New England Phonographers Union, and other
groups. Musicians with whom Karel has performed on trumpet and/or analog
electronics include Josh Abrams, Jason Ajemian, Thomas Ankersmit, Jim Baker,
Matt Bauder, Jeb Bishop, Olivia Block, Blowhole, Alessandro Bosetti, Lucio
Capece, Cheer-Accident, Audrey Chen, Bobby Conn, Tim Daisy, Kevin Drumm,
David Grubbs, Boris Hauf, Chris Heenan, Steven Hess, Giuseppe Ielasi, Jeph
Jerman, Annette Krebs, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Helen Mirra, Toshimaru Nakamura,
Jeff Parker, Polwechsel, Gert-Jan Prins, Key Ransone, Vic Rawlings, Gino Robair,
Aram Shelton, Aiko Shimada, TV Pow, Ken Vandermark, Sabine Vogel, Weasel
Walter, Otomo Yoshihide, Michael Zerang, and others.
Karel has mastered CD releases by Born Heller, Dragons 1976, Josephine Foster,
the Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio, Matmos, Helen Mirra, Brendan Murray, Skeletons
Out, Howard Stelzer, and others, and remastered classic releases for CD by Tod
Dockstader, Gamelan Son of Lion, Ilhan Mimaroglu, David Nzomo, Kenneth
Patchen, Ramon Sender, and others.
Karel currently manages the Sensory Ethnography Lab and the Film Study Center
at Harvard University, where as Lecturer on Anthropology, he also co-teaches
courses in media archaeology and ethnographic audio and video production.
CROW WITH NO MOUTH (JUNE 2010)
Serendipity and a little research yield the damndest things, on your way to writing
about this music.
It turns out I first heard Ernst Karel in 1991 when he was a 21 year old trumpeter
playing under the alias Ernst Long. I was entering a hiatus, at the onset of that new
decade, from listening to free jazz/improv, burnt out following a decade and a
half of unchecked avidity and unchecked vinyl consumption. I was checking out a
little rock music for the first time in a long while, which led to the Seattle bands
Green River, the Melvins, the fantastic Screaming Trees and the Puccini of that
scene, Soundgarden. Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger was in frequent rotation that
year. The trumpet player on that date - Ernst Long, a.k.a Ernst Karel.
The trajectory from serving as a session musician on that date, to his current gig as
the manager for the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory and Film Study Center at
Harvard, is undoubtedly worth charting. The trumpet prevailed throughout the
ensuing 18 or so years, part of Karel's instrumentation in the excellent improvising
duo EKG, his long-standing collaboration with Kyle Bruckmann. I first heard EKG
about 5 years ago, and have very much enjoyed the three releases under that
name since then. They are a genuinely electro-acoustic partnership, Bruckmann
contributing oboe and English horn, as well as analogue electronics, Karel
moving between trumpet and electronics. Erasure [the lines drawn between
composition and improvisation, between orchestral and electronic sound sources]
is their unfussy metier, and they have established a small, superlative body of
recorded work.
The trumpet cannot be found in Karel's 2010 releases, Heard Laboratories
[and/OAR], or Falter 1-5, Karel's duo with Annette Krebs [Cathnor]. Karel has
varied interests in sound exploration, and there is no place for his playing at all in
Heard Laboratories. So what is he up to, sans trumpet, prowling the research labs
of Harvard with cardioid mics and inarguably acute ears?
Heard Laboratories presents Karel the researcher, documentarian and abstract
musician, foregrounding the sounds of science-the sounds of the labs, the
frequently goofy looking, Grade B sci-fi apparatus that conducts the research
carried on at Harvard, and, as intermittently as the co-equal sounds of tamarins
getting their cages cleaned, or the jarring burst of a telephone ringing, the
transient sounds of the humans doing the research. With an equanimity and
dispassion that would please Cage, all of these sounds are captured, unprocessed,
then edited into five pieces.
When I say Karel was prowling, I mean it-only one track [an in situ recording of the
cognitive evolution lab] involved a stationary mic. The other pieces were realized
with Karel wielding hand-held mics, threading his way through rooms rarely visited
by anyone outside of their specialized resident researchers, much less someone
documenting the physical process that undergirds everything from chemistry labs,
an MRI room, and, most distressingly for this listener, the squeals and cries of
monkeys in the cognitive evolution laboratory.
It is Karel the researcher, who once aimed his mics at the sounds of Kerala in
South India, doing doctoral research in the anthropology of sound, now micing his
colleagues at Harvard for our listening...pleasure? Is there an intention beyond
whatever pleasure is yielded by the raw sounds themselves? I have not asked Karel
this directly, wanting to hear Heard Laboratories for myself before reading what he
might have to say. It is one of several questions that arose for me as I listened
through these five pieces.
And assuredly one of the fundamental questions raised by this sort of work, this
blending of the abstract and the documentary. I am, however, almost completely
unversed in theory and discussions about field recordings, so I get to tease all this
out "unscarred", as a friend has it, "by formal training."
Does foregrounding sounds typically unheard or passed by without our attending to
them necessarily result in sounds that merit our attending to them, much less
music? Of course not. The highest concept cannot offset sounds that do not
engage us, whether by prepossessing us in the cognitive realm, or in a more
visceral and intuitive way. Karel's concept, as I take it anyhow, is that there is
something engaging and gripping in the most quotidian and therefore ignored
sounds in our environs. What Karel does is present these environments-from an
egocentric perspective, the frame around our self-centered worlds- with a little
editing, for our consideration.
Well, Karel comes across as both the Gregory Bateson of EAI [Bateson was
immensely popular with myself and the non-anthropology students I hung out with,
his meta-koans perfect for our stoned, close attentions], and, perhaps more
apposite, much like verite film documentarians who make you intimate with
previously unknown worlds. In this sometimes thrumming, sometimes plangent
sound world, sentience and science cross fade; animal cries and yelling humans,
the mechanized rhythm of an MRI [a claustrophobia-inducing sound many of us
are familiar with], the ambiences of academia. The phototonics lab [track 5]
evokes the industrial drones of Eraserhead.
Then there are the animal labs. Interestingly, there is a statement found on the
and/OAR page for this release that reads: "The work does not take a position with
respect to what is documented, and neither endorses nor criticizes the research
programs of the laboratories which granted access."
Clearly this statement of artistic neutrality on what is documented by Karel
anticipates possible questions about the role of the artist and the label on the
ethical/political/social dimensions of what is documented. Again, I refrained from
querying either Karel or and/OAR label head Dale Lloyd prior to this, wanting to
hear Heard Laboratories for myself and reflect on some of these dimensions of this
sort of sound work. I know Lloyd has become even more committed to And/Oar
focusing on location recordings and field studies, saying the imprint will
...contribute to breaking down the long held beliefs of what can be considered as
music...expanded to include all sounds that can be enjoyed for various reasons.
Does Karel realize this intention here?
Splendidly, to my ears. There is immense serenity, dark and unsettling goings on,
and the simple hum of efficiency captured in these five pieces. These are
environments previously unmet, fully alive and frequently mysterious. As for Karel's
editing, the shaping of these unprocessed sounds recalls Truman Capote's line, I
believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. Heard Laboratories is a strong
statement, released by a strong label committed to documenting artists who hear
music in their own, immediate spheres.
But as Reading Rainbow host Levar Burton said, following every endorsement of
the children's books he presented to his young audience- You don't have to take
my word for it... read it for yourself. You might find a whole other set of concerns
arise, including how is this music? Should the documentarian be neutral in those
rooms? Or none of these.
And I didn't miss the trumpet once.
(Jesse Goin)
Serendipity and a little research yield the damndest things, on your way to writing
about this music.
It turns out I first heard Ernst Karel in 1991 when he was a 21 year old trumpeter
playing under the alias Ernst Long. I was entering a hiatus, at the onset of that new
decade, from listening to free jazz/improv, burnt out following a decade and a
half of unchecked avidity and unchecked vinyl consumption. I was checking out a
little rock music for the first time in a long while, which led to the Seattle bands
Green River, the Melvins, the fantastic Screaming Trees and the Puccini of that
scene, Soundgarden. Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger was in frequent rotation that
year. The trumpet player on that date - Ernst Long, a.k.a Ernst Karel.
The trajectory from serving as a session musician on that date, to his current gig as
the manager for the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory and Film Study Center at
Harvard, is undoubtedly worth charting. The trumpet prevailed throughout the
ensuing 18 or so years, part of Karel's instrumentation in the excellent improvising
duo EKG, his long-standing collaboration with Kyle Bruckmann. I first heard EKG
about 5 years ago, and have very much enjoyed the three releases under that
name since then. They are a genuinely electro-acoustic partnership, Bruckmann
contributing oboe and English horn, as well as analogue electronics, Karel
moving between trumpet and electronics. Erasure [the lines drawn between
composition and improvisation, between orchestral and electronic sound sources]
is their unfussy metier, and they have established a small, superlative body of
recorded work.
The trumpet cannot be found in Karel's 2010 releases, Heard Laboratories
[and/OAR], or Falter 1-5, Karel's duo with Annette Krebs [Cathnor]. Karel has
varied interests in sound exploration, and there is no place for his playing at all in
Heard Laboratories. So what is he up to, sans trumpet, prowling the research labs
of Harvard with cardioid mics and inarguably acute ears?
Heard Laboratories presents Karel the researcher, documentarian and abstract
musician, foregrounding the sounds of science-the sounds of the labs, the
frequently goofy looking, Grade B sci-fi apparatus that conducts the research
carried on at Harvard, and, as intermittently as the co-equal sounds of tamarins
getting their cages cleaned, or the jarring burst of a telephone ringing, the
transient sounds of the humans doing the research. With an equanimity and
dispassion that would please Cage, all of these sounds are captured, unprocessed,
then edited into five pieces.
When I say Karel was prowling, I mean it-only one track [an in situ recording of the
cognitive evolution lab] involved a stationary mic. The other pieces were realized
with Karel wielding hand-held mics, threading his way through rooms rarely visited
by anyone outside of their specialized resident researchers, much less someone
documenting the physical process that undergirds everything from chemistry labs,
an MRI room, and, most distressingly for this listener, the squeals and cries of
monkeys in the cognitive evolution laboratory.
It is Karel the researcher, who once aimed his mics at the sounds of Kerala in
South India, doing doctoral research in the anthropology of sound, now micing his
colleagues at Harvard for our listening...pleasure? Is there an intention beyond
whatever pleasure is yielded by the raw sounds themselves? I have not asked Karel
this directly, wanting to hear Heard Laboratories for myself before reading what he
might have to say. It is one of several questions that arose for me as I listened
through these five pieces.
And assuredly one of the fundamental questions raised by this sort of work, this
blending of the abstract and the documentary. I am, however, almost completely
unversed in theory and discussions about field recordings, so I get to tease all this
out "unscarred", as a friend has it, "by formal training."
Does foregrounding sounds typically unheard or passed by without our attending to
them necessarily result in sounds that merit our attending to them, much less
music? Of course not. The highest concept cannot offset sounds that do not
engage us, whether by prepossessing us in the cognitive realm, or in a more
visceral and intuitive way. Karel's concept, as I take it anyhow, is that there is
something engaging and gripping in the most quotidian and therefore ignored
sounds in our environs. What Karel does is present these environments-from an
egocentric perspective, the frame around our self-centered worlds- with a little
editing, for our consideration.
Well, Karel comes across as both the Gregory Bateson of EAI [Bateson was
immensely popular with myself and the non-anthropology students I hung out with,
his meta-koans perfect for our stoned, close attentions], and, perhaps more
apposite, much like verite film documentarians who make you intimate with
previously unknown worlds. In this sometimes thrumming, sometimes plangent
sound world, sentience and science cross fade; animal cries and yelling humans,
the mechanized rhythm of an MRI [a claustrophobia-inducing sound many of us
are familiar with], the ambiences of academia. The phototonics lab [track 5]
evokes the industrial drones of Eraserhead.
Then there are the animal labs. Interestingly, there is a statement found on the
and/OAR page for this release that reads: "The work does not take a position with
respect to what is documented, and neither endorses nor criticizes the research
programs of the laboratories which granted access."
Clearly this statement of artistic neutrality on what is documented by Karel
anticipates possible questions about the role of the artist and the label on the
ethical/political/social dimensions of what is documented. Again, I refrained from
querying either Karel or and/OAR label head Dale Lloyd prior to this, wanting to
hear Heard Laboratories for myself and reflect on some of these dimensions of this
sort of sound work. I know Lloyd has become even more committed to And/Oar
focusing on location recordings and field studies, saying the imprint will
...contribute to breaking down the long held beliefs of what can be considered as
music...expanded to include all sounds that can be enjoyed for various reasons.
Does Karel realize this intention here?
Splendidly, to my ears. There is immense serenity, dark and unsettling goings on,
and the simple hum of efficiency captured in these five pieces. These are
environments previously unmet, fully alive and frequently mysterious. As for Karel's
editing, the shaping of these unprocessed sounds recalls Truman Capote's line, I
believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. Heard Laboratories is a strong
statement, released by a strong label committed to documenting artists who hear
music in their own, immediate spheres.
But as Reading Rainbow host Levar Burton said, following every endorsement of
the children's books he presented to his young audience- You don't have to take
my word for it... read it for yourself. You might find a whole other set of concerns
arise, including how is this music? Should the documentarian be neutral in those
rooms? Or none of these.
And I didn't miss the trumpet once.
(Jesse Goin)
THE WATCHFUL EAR (JUNE 2010)
Tonight’s CD is an interesting one. Before we go anywhere let me say that its a
disc by Ernst Karel, who recently had a release on the Cathnor label so you can
all bear that in mind when you read my thoughts on it, as if that makes any
difference to anything, but there you go, the usual caveats in place. The disc is a
set of recordings made by Karel named Heard Laboratories recently released on
the and/OAR label. While much of the work Karel is best known for is
improvisation, most commonly with various forms of electronics and the
occasional trumpet, the five tracks here are I guess, a form of field recording. He
has in fact made some good quality recordings of various laboratories found in
Harvard University. Holding a pair of stereo mics in his hand he has walked around
from room to room capturing mostly non-human sounds, and they are then
presented here without any processing.
This CD raises all kinds of questions for me. First of all, it often sounds very
musical. Now, when we hear field recordings of a roaring sea, or a babbling brook,
or the wind in the trees full of twittering birds we naturally find the sounds
beautiful, often musical. Its interesting here then that I find the sound of the
laboratories, all groaning machines, humming, whistling, fizzing sounds with the
odd sign of human activity, a crash of instruments, a running tap, a ringing
telephone, the occasional voice, just as musically captivating. I find myself
placing these sounds into the context of instrumental parts. While there has been
some editing of the recordings take place, and we do get the occasional abrupt
cut from one room to the next what we hear is mostly just what can be heard in the
laboratory, rooms that the common man does not often get to hear. What are all
those strange noises? What do those machines do? Why am I connecting one
sound to the next and enjoying the way they seem to bounce off of one another?
The detailed notes on the sleeve do give some context to each of the recordings
here, describing the particular laboratory and what is researched within. Quite
often even after reading the description I am still none the wiser though, and that’s
perhaps one of the things that make all of this interesting- if all of this technology
is lost on me, can I then find another use for it? Does my translation of these
sounds into music insult the work done in these laboratories? Why do I find this
stuff interesting on this level?
The questions I ask about the music are thrown into particular disarray with the
middle track of the five here, which is partly recorded in the Cognitive Evolution
Laboratory, a room that uses tamarin monkeys as a key part of the research. So
during the track we hear the squeaks and chatter of the caged monkeys. There is
no suggestion reading the notes that the animals are actually placed under any
distress in this room, but of course the sounds we hear on this track take on an extra
meaning. I find myself wondering if it is right for me to be enjoying the recording
as a piece of music given the sounds on the recording. Do we have a moral
obligation to not enjoy these sounds as much as others? Is it right to consider
these sounds in the same way as we consider the hum of a fridge or the buzz of an
MRI scanner?
So I find myself wondering why Ernst Karel chose this particular source of sounds
to make this album. Certainly there is a fine array of vaguely electronic sounding
noises on display, and the resulting recordings do sound quite close to his
improvisation. Is the choice of the laboratory a decision made on purely sonic
interest grounds though? A note at the and/OAR website tells us that the work does
not take any position with respect to what is documented, and neither endorses or
criticises the research undertaken in the laboratories, so is the choice one made
and presented to us to make up our own minds about the worth and morality of the
laboratory? Or are we just meant to receive the recordings as examples of
interesting abstracted sonic environments? If we consider these recordings purely
as a collection of found sounds then this is a thoroughly interesting CD. If though,
as I am finding myself doing, we consider the source of the sounds, and those
chattering monkeys in cages in particular, then a whole new set of considerations
come into play regarding this disc. I suspect Karel’s intentions may well have
fallen somewhere in between the two approaches, and I have certainly been
made to think by this unusual, unexpected album. (Richard Pinnell)
Tonight’s CD is an interesting one. Before we go anywhere let me say that its a
disc by Ernst Karel, who recently had a release on the Cathnor label so you can
all bear that in mind when you read my thoughts on it, as if that makes any
difference to anything, but there you go, the usual caveats in place. The disc is a
set of recordings made by Karel named Heard Laboratories recently released on
the and/OAR label. While much of the work Karel is best known for is
improvisation, most commonly with various forms of electronics and the
occasional trumpet, the five tracks here are I guess, a form of field recording. He
has in fact made some good quality recordings of various laboratories found in
Harvard University. Holding a pair of stereo mics in his hand he has walked around
from room to room capturing mostly non-human sounds, and they are then
presented here without any processing.
This CD raises all kinds of questions for me. First of all, it often sounds very
musical. Now, when we hear field recordings of a roaring sea, or a babbling brook,
or the wind in the trees full of twittering birds we naturally find the sounds
beautiful, often musical. Its interesting here then that I find the sound of the
laboratories, all groaning machines, humming, whistling, fizzing sounds with the
odd sign of human activity, a crash of instruments, a running tap, a ringing
telephone, the occasional voice, just as musically captivating. I find myself
placing these sounds into the context of instrumental parts. While there has been
some editing of the recordings take place, and we do get the occasional abrupt
cut from one room to the next what we hear is mostly just what can be heard in the
laboratory, rooms that the common man does not often get to hear. What are all
those strange noises? What do those machines do? Why am I connecting one
sound to the next and enjoying the way they seem to bounce off of one another?
The detailed notes on the sleeve do give some context to each of the recordings
here, describing the particular laboratory and what is researched within. Quite
often even after reading the description I am still none the wiser though, and that’s
perhaps one of the things that make all of this interesting- if all of this technology
is lost on me, can I then find another use for it? Does my translation of these
sounds into music insult the work done in these laboratories? Why do I find this
stuff interesting on this level?
The questions I ask about the music are thrown into particular disarray with the
middle track of the five here, which is partly recorded in the Cognitive Evolution
Laboratory, a room that uses tamarin monkeys as a key part of the research. So
during the track we hear the squeaks and chatter of the caged monkeys. There is
no suggestion reading the notes that the animals are actually placed under any
distress in this room, but of course the sounds we hear on this track take on an extra
meaning. I find myself wondering if it is right for me to be enjoying the recording
as a piece of music given the sounds on the recording. Do we have a moral
obligation to not enjoy these sounds as much as others? Is it right to consider
these sounds in the same way as we consider the hum of a fridge or the buzz of an
MRI scanner?
So I find myself wondering why Ernst Karel chose this particular source of sounds
to make this album. Certainly there is a fine array of vaguely electronic sounding
noises on display, and the resulting recordings do sound quite close to his
improvisation. Is the choice of the laboratory a decision made on purely sonic
interest grounds though? A note at the and/OAR website tells us that the work does
not take any position with respect to what is documented, and neither endorses or
criticises the research undertaken in the laboratories, so is the choice one made
and presented to us to make up our own minds about the worth and morality of the
laboratory? Or are we just meant to receive the recordings as examples of
interesting abstracted sonic environments? If we consider these recordings purely
as a collection of found sounds then this is a thoroughly interesting CD. If though,
as I am finding myself doing, we consider the source of the sounds, and those
chattering monkeys in cages in particular, then a whole new set of considerations
come into play regarding this disc. I suspect Karel’s intentions may well have
fallen somewhere in between the two approaches, and I have certainly been
made to think by this unusual, unexpected album. (Richard Pinnell)
JUST OUTSIDE (JULY 2010)
Like the title says. I imagine we've all been in situations where the sound
environment is so overtly full and rich that we pause and linger, absorbing the
waves, wallowing in the mass of sound. I recall, long before I had any notion of
"field recordings", leaning against the engine housing of the Block Island ferry,
imbibing the deep, complex thrum, losing myself to the vibrations felt through the
metal. Generally, at least in discs that have happened my way, musicians tend
toward subtler territory, sounds that tinge the aural space instead of saturating it.
Not Karel.
The recordings here are unprocessed, taped in various scientific and medical
laboratories at Harvard, though I suspect they're often layered atop one another
(perhaps not!). I'm not sure what to say otherwise, except maybe to describe them
as possessing roughly the kind of hums and buzzes one encounters in such
environments, augmented with the bangs and clinks occasioned by human
activity and the odd voice. It's just there, much as it would be if you were sitting in
the room. I'll say, however, that I enjoy it immensely, love sitting here, in my room,
vicariously experiencing the sonic nature of those spaces a couple hundred miles
away. As in all fine projects of this general nature, Karel coaxes the listener into
perceptions and awareness (s)he wold likely never have otherwise experienced,
always a very valuable thing. (Brian Olewnick)
Like the title says. I imagine we've all been in situations where the sound
environment is so overtly full and rich that we pause and linger, absorbing the
waves, wallowing in the mass of sound. I recall, long before I had any notion of
"field recordings", leaning against the engine housing of the Block Island ferry,
imbibing the deep, complex thrum, losing myself to the vibrations felt through the
metal. Generally, at least in discs that have happened my way, musicians tend
toward subtler territory, sounds that tinge the aural space instead of saturating it.
Not Karel.
The recordings here are unprocessed, taped in various scientific and medical
laboratories at Harvard, though I suspect they're often layered atop one another
(perhaps not!). I'm not sure what to say otherwise, except maybe to describe them
as possessing roughly the kind of hums and buzzes one encounters in such
environments, augmented with the bangs and clinks occasioned by human
activity and the odd voice. It's just there, much as it would be if you were sitting in
the room. I'll say, however, that I enjoy it immensely, love sitting here, in my room,
vicariously experiencing the sonic nature of those spaces a couple hundred miles
away. As in all fine projects of this general nature, Karel coaxes the listener into
perceptions and awareness (s)he wold likely never have otherwise experienced,
always a very valuable thing. (Brian Olewnick)
THE WIRE (OCTOBER 2010)
Static hangs in the background, then valves thwack open, air blasts through the
instrument and sounds trace thrilling tonal arcs. But no musicians are present;
indeed there's no human presence audible at all, except for an occasional
murmured voice describing experimental conditions. These are the sounds of
possibly the strangest instruments in the world - those at the science laboratories at
Harvard University, as heard through the hand-held stereo recorder of musician
and sound anthropologist Ernst Karel. The five longform pieces of Heard
Laboratories are an open-ended listen that's rare among field recordings. You're
sucked into the laboratory space as Karel slowly works his way around the room, as
if you're an integral witness to the experiment, the sounds poking around in your
brain, waking up your synapses.
The five pieces are accompanied by time-lined notes, so you can try and decode
what's going on in each case. In practice though, the science behind it is so
complex ("6:15: Organometallic chemistry laboratory, room two: Our major focus
is on atomic layer deposition, a process for depositing think layers from two of
more vapour precursors...") that it remains all but opaque. Similarly, what you're
hearing much of the time is not one distinct process so much as the ambient noise
of a space packed with multiple instruments, massed air-conditioning, bright lights
and steadily humming auxiliary units. The photo on the front cover sums it up
nicely: an anonymous fluorescent-lit room with an awesome vault of machinery,
tanks, tubes, valves and electronic gizmos, all hooked up seemingly at random by
cobwebs of wires and tubes. If there's any idealogical point to be made, it's that
modern advances in science require incredibly specific division of labour, to the
point where the cutting edge is miniaturised and virtually invisible to the
non-specialist (it should be noted in passing that getting virtually unrestricted
access to these usually hidden places at the very least makes this a valuable
piece of audio-journalism).
But in any case, it's thrilling on a level of pure sensation and simple physical
wonder. Precise blasts of pressured gas flex through plastic tubing: a centrifuge
whirrs quietly and efficiently in the bowels of a machine. The recording itself is
spacious and detailed, and it underlines the feeling that, in these strange places,
anything is possible." (Derek Walmsley)
Static hangs in the background, then valves thwack open, air blasts through the
instrument and sounds trace thrilling tonal arcs. But no musicians are present;
indeed there's no human presence audible at all, except for an occasional
murmured voice describing experimental conditions. These are the sounds of
possibly the strangest instruments in the world - those at the science laboratories at
Harvard University, as heard through the hand-held stereo recorder of musician
and sound anthropologist Ernst Karel. The five longform pieces of Heard
Laboratories are an open-ended listen that's rare among field recordings. You're
sucked into the laboratory space as Karel slowly works his way around the room, as
if you're an integral witness to the experiment, the sounds poking around in your
brain, waking up your synapses.
The five pieces are accompanied by time-lined notes, so you can try and decode
what's going on in each case. In practice though, the science behind it is so
complex ("6:15: Organometallic chemistry laboratory, room two: Our major focus
is on atomic layer deposition, a process for depositing think layers from two of
more vapour precursors...") that it remains all but opaque. Similarly, what you're
hearing much of the time is not one distinct process so much as the ambient noise
of a space packed with multiple instruments, massed air-conditioning, bright lights
and steadily humming auxiliary units. The photo on the front cover sums it up
nicely: an anonymous fluorescent-lit room with an awesome vault of machinery,
tanks, tubes, valves and electronic gizmos, all hooked up seemingly at random by
cobwebs of wires and tubes. If there's any idealogical point to be made, it's that
modern advances in science require incredibly specific division of labour, to the
point where the cutting edge is miniaturised and virtually invisible to the
non-specialist (it should be noted in passing that getting virtually unrestricted
access to these usually hidden places at the very least makes this a valuable
piece of audio-journalism).
But in any case, it's thrilling on a level of pure sensation and simple physical
wonder. Precise blasts of pressured gas flex through plastic tubing: a centrifuge
whirrs quietly and efficiently in the bowels of a machine. The recording itself is
spacious and detailed, and it underlines the feeling that, in these strange places,
anything is possible." (Derek Walmsley)