First up is Annette Vande Gorne’s new album Tutti frutti. A rhizomatic GRM-like sound structure full of narrative force. Poetic and fragmented, still carrying enough coherence to work as a stereo album, although the original presentation was by means of a spatialized output via eight loudspeakers, with additional sound interactions triggered by the audience. Quite often, these sound works for other people’s sculptural installations struggle to work as a simple audio-only release. Vande Gorne, however, manages to capture the complex personalities and diverse behaviours of sonic artefacts as adeptly as a movie or stage director, while maintaining a certain sense of randomness – as if you were following a defined course through a crowd of many. Chance encounters with others reveal marked differences in the speed and volume of their surroundings. And the aural adventure is never a foggy notion, nor clearly defined. One could easily have seen this release on the Recollections GRM or Portraits GRM vinyl series. Spectacular in a relatively understated, yet intimate way, this journey is deeply personal and affecting.

More multi-sensory inspiration or concept turned into a stereo mix can be found on Errant Ear by Brunhild Ferrari: “composed at the end of 2024 with this feeling of wandering, of strolling in my memories that I was able to capture with my ears, my eyes, my nose, all my sensations, things that my life is made of and that I keep almost like treasures.” The three-minute coda or encore by means of the capriccio is sweet, delicate and surprisingly cute. And it feels like a breath of fresh air following the quite massive, not to say monolithic, main work. A rediscovery too, of the world around you – as if you were eased into everyday life again. With familiar sounds, recent connections, and a joie de vivre, too. Errant Ear, a half hour of sensitive and sensational radio art, is a re-visitation and re-composition of impressions of past and current reminiscences. Ferrari manages to conjure up an aural landscape of wandering and wonder, with definite lines of inspiration and origin that draw from Chris Watson and Luc Ferrari, as well as her own archival recordings. A mix towards new life, not to dabble in what was, but bringing into life what could have been, what can still be – still be done. The outside becomes internalised. The macro folds into micro. The almost mute zoomed in for a close-up listen. Errant Ear is a meditation, comprising 50+ minutes of listening, hearing, and composing with sound, time, and perception. And it’s emotional, intimate, and deeply personal — an exclamation mark to a life lived in sound, in minor keys, through subtle gestures in Walden-like electroacoustic bliss.