(under construction)
Sounding Out is an ongoing project of recordings in locations I visit. It is an exploration of natural acoustics, architecture and sacred sites.
What you hear are in situ improvisations, inspired by the spirit and the special characteristics of a location.
The idea came as soon as I started playing the saxophone and could take my instrument outdoors. At the time, I was into binaural recordings, making field recordings of urban and rural places alike, while on the move. This gave a sense of narrative and ever changing soundscape to compositions which were structured around those recordings.
Soon enough, I started introducing sounds from the soprano saxophone which merged into the environment, responding to what I heard. So the project started to develop around forest walks. I created artefacts, which included sounds from natural environments and signs of my passage in those places - as I moved through woods and trees, and responded with the sax. This was a very contemplative exercise, an extension of the French art movement of urban dérive, combined with acoustic ecology and deep listening. The playing was meant to be part of the soundscape and not impose anything external. So the sounds I produced were mostly minimal abstract noises peripheral to the instrument.
Later, I felt that the activity of listening and communicating with the environment had to go beyond a mimicking, call-and-response act. With a change of recording equipment (a long awaited move from MD to hi-res digital recorder), I also changed my approach. More importantly, I realised that my listening and interaction with the surroundings went a lot deeper than just the sounds I heard. And the type of locations I visited also expanded – this is probably due to living in England, where playing the sax in forests in winter was just not going to happen.
After many years of this exploratory activity, I have played in many types of locations, in forests, caves, valleys with unusual echoes, churches, abbeys - which I still consider outdoors, to a certain extent. By this I mean that I recorded away from a controlled environment (home or studio), in conditions which were difficult and at best, just cold and damp.
All the Sounding Out recordings are based on this very idea of playing with a space, in the moment. Sometimes the architecture becomes another instrument one has to be aware of and interact with. And every location imposes a certain mood, an approach to playing, and sometimes even specific tones, when they inhabit the environment, and respond to its resonant frequency(ies).
A major development of the project is that I started to understand that the recordings were journeys in their own rights; to locations (this sometimes involved long walks carrying sax and equipment), but also inside the place itself. In many cases, I felt that I could not just barge in and start blasting out weird noises. I had to get accustomed to the surroundings, and somehow be accepted too. At other times, inspiration just would not come, or worse, I could sense a real resistance to my playing. I knew that ‘sounding out’ all the different types of locations was not just responding to a range of soundscapes, to architecture and acoustics but was something even more subtle. So I started to integrate my daily meditations with the places I visited. Having thus settled and emptied my mind of the outside world, what I played (or more correctly what came out of my instrument) was totally inspired by the place, its atmosphere and came from a communication with its ‘spirit’.
S o u n d i n g O u t a l b u m s by Hervé Perez
S m o o F a l l s [b061s]
free download
(listen to tracks, all files)
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