A Closer Listen
The comforting concepts of safe ground and common ground could not be more timely, although one might argue that they have always been timely. The first is the name of the Brussels label, the second the name of its yearly compilation series, which is now on its third installment. In a way, the latest album mirrors the collaborative bent of Aho Ssan’s recent Rhizomes, and the artist is one of many ACL favorites to appear on the set. While these artists are not sharing studios, they are sharing a pair of common causes: Help Refugees/Choose Love and Sea-Watch NGOs.
Volume 1 is the most ambient and field-recording-minded entry of the series, beginning with Lawrence English’s “To Rest Upon Your Shore,” which serves as an overture to the set: the sea, the beautiful sea, the waves against the pebbles, smoothing the rough edges, washing the debris away. Claire Rousay adds the sounds of footsteps, traffic, rain and a barking dog to “floor six,” while the piano seeps in as well. Do other lands have traffic too, and barking dogs, and rain? Over the course of the series, the common ground, among a variety of composers and genres, becomes tone. Christina Vantzou’s “Movement messages,” for example, is a spoken word track, but it also includes footsteps, making connections through sound. The harder beats of Saint Abdullah make sense after Vantzou, but they would not have made sense after English, revealing the genius behind the sequencing: LB Marszalek, the founder of Safe Ground, is also represented in his musical guise, returning to the ocean while adding birdsong and a dedication to beloved butterfly the Camberwell beauty.
Birds continue to cry in KMRU’s “Folded” ~ yes, there are birds in Nairobi as well, and children playing, and hopes and dreams. The pursuit of common ground begins with common experience. Lucy Liyou’s “Sung” is like a lullaby, until it’s not ~ leading to “Doubts,” a somber piece with an abraded sea. The prescription offered is human connection, celebrated in more eaze’s innocent “thinking of u.”
Volume 2 is awash in site favorites, beginning with the recently-reviewed Adela Mede, who starts things off in peaceful fashion, with woodpecker and voice. A move toward experimentalism, teased in the final minutes of Volume 1‘s concluding track, is extended here. In Nyokabi Kariuki’s “Sunset in Nairobi,” a person seems to be playing the kalimba in the middle of traffic while distant families sing tribal chants, a disorienting yet intriguing experience. Sabiwa stretches the sonic field even further on “In the mood of Valencia,” whispering playfully while winding toys and tumbling through a variety of small instruments before electronics descend. Piotr Kurek offers an onomatopoeic voice, accessible to every language because it is of universal origin. Li Yilei raises the volume, density and the intensity on the closing “skin.”
And now to this year’s Volume 3, released as war continues to dominate the headlines. Once again, the international cast serves as a metaphor for the title. How can all of these genres, all of these seemingly disparate artists occupy common ground, their tracks toppling into other tracks like siblings shaking hands, Victoria Wijeratne’s piano giving way to JJJJJerome Ellis’ exploratory saxophone and drone, and Martyna Basta’s sighs and electronic abstractions seeding the ground from which Colin Self’s mournful violin and voice will sprout? In the center of the set lies Aho Ssan’s “Blue Tears,” an explosion of electronics that demonstrates the distance traveled from the album opener, so gradually that it has hardly been noticed. Common ground is the starting line for appreciating differences, as counter-intuitive as that may sound. Liew Niyomkarn recites an abstract poem with an accessible chorus: and we become one. The words don’t have to make sense, as long as the invitation is there. This is the entire premise of the project, which concludes with Alliyah Enyo’s “Look Godly in Your Eyes”; there is more than unites us than divides us, if only we have the eyes to recognize it. (Richard Allen)
Tue Nov 21 00:01:42 GMT 2023