One of the big beasts roaming the electroacoustic savannah, Jonty Harrison combines technological sophistication and psychological subtlety with insatiable hunger for sound. His hour-long Going / Places ranges far and wide, quite literally, grazing materials from around the globe: railroad horns from Ohio; bubbling geothermal pools in Iceland; calls to prayer in Istanbul; Mexican bagpipers; frogs in Borneo; market callers in Melbourne. A travelogue of bewildering discontinuities, it rushes on with the uplifting fluency of a dream. Voyages also features Espaces cachés, a series of scenes and apparitions also crafted from found sounds. Originally conceived in 30-track expansiveness, the piece is here condensed into unusually vivid stereo. And Harrison never allows studio expertise to sideline potential for enchantment.

Der zu Birmingham emeritierte Komponist und Elektroakustiker Jonty Harrison hat auf Voyages (empreintes DIGITALes) zwei aktuelle Stücke für das Stereoformat der CD aufbereitet, ohne wesentliche Abstriche in der klanglichen Raumdimension eingegangen zu sein, die seine auf Multi-Kanal-Repräsentation ausgerichteten Werke prinzipiell mit sich bringen. Dank Ambisonics, einem bereits in den siebziger Jahren entwickelten Verfahren zur Aufnahme und Wiedergabe von Klangfeldern, eröffnet diese Veröffentlichung Welten aus der Welt.

Das 2014 in Montpellier uraufgeführte Espaces cachés (13:54) kompiliert imaginative Sachverhalte, die wohl dem Leben an sich „abgelauscht“ wurden und dennoch eine davon unabhängige Meta-Existenz konstituieren. Insbesondere wird das Spiel mit dem Erinnerungsvermögen und seinen Trugbildern exemplifiziert. Inszenatorische Aushöhlungen oder Auffüllungen spielen allenfalls eine marginale Rolle, wenn „die Welt“ mit natürlicher Konsistenz und Resonanz poliert wird.

Der zweite Track, Going / Places (59:55), kompiliert und strukturiert in 23 Episoden die Welterfahrung des Komponisten, wie sie aus seiner in über 25 Jahren gepflegten Sound Library nun auch zu uns spricht. In der Gesamtheit eine Weltreise, im Detail eine Einladung zur Fusionierung aus (eigener) Lebenserfahrung und dem Abgleich mit der geradezu fantastischen Grenzenlosigkeit des akustischen Vermögens. Vielleicht gehören die Voyages zu jenen Veröffentlichungen, nach deren Genuss man von der Welt nicht nur mehr weiß, sondern auch versteht.

Zaglądam do katalogu kanadyjskiej oficyny empreintes DIGITALes, gdzie pojawił się album profesora Jonty’ego Harrisona.

Brytyjski kompozytor i muzyk studiował w latach 70. m.in. fortepian na Uniwersytecie w York. W 1980 roku dołączył do Instytutu Muzyki Uniwersytetu w Birmingham. Dwa lata później założył BEAST, czyli Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre. Jako kompozytor otrzymał szereg nagród.

Wydawnictwo Voyages pomieściło dwie elektroakustyczne/akuzmatyczne kompozycie: Espaces cachés (2014) i Going / Places (2015). Ten pierwszy utwór miał swoją premierę na festiwalu Klang! Électroacoustique w Montpellier oraz powstał w oparciu o różne odgłosy związane z podróżowaniem i naturą. W Going / Places Harrison także nawiązuje do zjawiska podróżowania. To nagranie zostało stworzone na taśmę w formie 32-kanałowej instalacji.

Since the UK bought a one-way ticket on the trans-euro (political) express (but has yet to punch the ticket and actually make the journey) the country’s in a state of psycho-political chaos and music hardly seems important — and yet — where else can we gain a sense of beauty / truth / escape / relief but in that which gives us pleasure? So the train as metaphor for escape from immediate reality is obvious, excuse me…

Pierre Schaeffer famously recorded a train for the first example of musique concrète (Cinq études de bruits) in 1948 and Jonty Harrison must surely have had that in mind when making his own extended version of that pioneering work. He does, however, travel much further along the track, sometimes to the point of simply allowing train horns to ‘speak’ for themselves, which on paper sounds dull but proves strangely captivating. A master of sound manipulation, he treats concrète recordings so as to blur the lines between what we think of as ‘real’ and ‘created’.

These are not just train recordings, but sounds captured from all over the place, one example that leaps from the speakers being part 11 of Going / Places, made from ‘Floating quays strain at their moorings near Sydney Opera House (Australia)’. Bagpipes, frogs, a street demonstration and other recorded events are woven into this magical journey. Espaces cachés is a separate 14-minute piece which fully explores the wonders of acousmatic sound composition. Escapism may not be freedom but in these times Jonty Harrison’s captivating sound world does, at least, offer blessed relief.

As far as I recall the only other time the name Jonty Harrison came up in Vital Weekly was when I reviewed a release by a student of his, Peter Batchelor (Vital Weekly #929). Much of the work composed by Harrison is simply not designed to be played on a stereo system, but to be experienced in places; places where they have a whole bunch of speakers, anything from a couple more than two up to an immense lot. Harrison is aware himself of the problem that presents this when reducing it to stereo for a CD release. Joseph Anderson suggested to use Ambisonics, which “is a full-sphere surround sound technique: in addition to the horizontal plane, it covers sound sources above and below the listener” (and you can read lots more on wiki, I’d say). Much of Harrison’s work deals with field recordings and ever since the 90s he’s been carrying around devices to do these recordings, usually when traveling. On this release we have two pieces. The fourteen-minute Espaces cachés and the one-hour long Going / Places. The first piece seems to be overlapping field recordings together, so that multiple sounds come together and create a new place; one recognize some of the sounds, and sometimes we don’t. There are cicadas, city sounds, farmyard and nature recordings — and no doubt lots more. It seems to be having mild processing, but surely it hasn’t.

The other piece, Going / Places contains [twenty-three] separate pieces of music, which create the sense of journey. There is lots of railway stations, tourists, harbours, boats in here, along with a geothermal pool in both Iceland and New Zealand, crickets, people playing music, a call for prayer and many more. Here too some of it is cut together, but then sounds that are from a similar group, like the aforementioned pools, or bells from various countries at the same time. It makes indeed a wonderfully [sound journey], across continents, from cities to nature and back. Sometimes it seems there is some kind of processing going on but I’m sure there is none. This release works best when one uses a pair of headphones in order to hear this ambisonics work best; in a more normal situation with speakers it worked a bit less in that respect.

If ‘music is organised sound’, then this new album by Jonty Harrison is far more than a collection of seemingly unrelated field-recordings. It is a composition (or two, actually) in its own right, created by selecting sounds from a variety of locations, spaces, places, scenes and vistas ‘which we may or may not have experienced, but which we somehow recognise’.

The first piece of this acousmatic electroacoustic collection, Espaces cachés, is a 14-minute ambisonic trip created from the original 30-track commission from Maison des arts sonores.

The second piece, called Going / Places is a one hour journey divided into 23 parts. The recordings come from all over the world and are often combined in such a way that they could never have existed on one location simultaneously.

The scenes, ‘one implying imminent motion, the other more restful and tranquil’, take you all over the world — unpredictably jumping between Europe, Iceland, Australia, North America, North Africa and parts of Asia.

“Sounds reach us as they would in everyday life, as if we were ‘there’: from multiple locations in different positions and at different heights and distances. In this sense we are closer to reality; but even the bounds of reality can be stretched by the agencies of motion and memory — unreality, surreality and hyper-reality are but steps along the route that can be taken by the imagination…”

Save yourself an expensive holiday this year: buy this album, put on a quality headphone, close your eyes — and let professor Jonty Harrison guide you to some unexpected corners.