A Closer Listen
Quaker Run Wildfire is a sequel of sorts to Almanac Behind, one of our site’s top albums of 2022. But it is not the sort of sequel that Daniel Bachman wanted to make; after recording an LP on the theme of climate change, including samples of Virginia firefighters and a digital rendition of smoke, a massive fire began to approach his own house. Suddenly everything was even more personal and immediate.
Fortunately, Bachman’s house survived. The Quaker Run Fire lasted 25 days, a stretch of fear and anxiety for local residents. Bachman channeled his energy into recording the woods and its panicked wildlife, converting photo and video to WAV files and adding music of his own. Nero fiddled in apathy; Bachman fiddles in empathy, hoping that his recordings will help to raise awareness of how climate change affects drought and flammability, creating tinder from areas that were once considered immune.
As a Longform Editions work, Quaker Run Wildfire is a single extended track, bookended by field recordings. The earliest sounds are calm and bucolic: a forest at rest. Then the first drones intrude like smoke and alarm. Bird cries increase in volume, as if the forest knows what’s coming. Layer upon layer is added, string upon string, the calm not yet shattered, simply uneasy. The lush work of Rain Drinkers comes to mind (we miss you, please come home!). By the sixth minute the forest is engulfed in flame, the conflagration converted to a dense, impenetrable wall of sound. Still one can hear the flutter and panic, wings beating hard as nests are destroyed. Sirens can be heard in the distance. Even as the density diminishes in one area, new fires break out in the next. Guitar begins its dark ode, electronically stuttered like flickering power.
Again the volume rises; the battle is now in full force. The terror that seemed to be under control has surged back with a vengeance. At this point in the recording, the sound is so thick that it would be hard to slip in even a single note. 4000 acres are charred and smoldering. Eventually the day is saved, not by the human element but by nature and “several days of cold soaking November rain.” Bachman’s quiet ending produces an emotional pause, a time to meditate on the fires we start and our often futile efforts to contain them. (Richard Allen)
Fri Apr 19 00:01:49 GMT 2024