A Closer Listen
While it should come as no surprise, it’s still a joy to discover that two of our beloved recording artists are friends. Manja Ristić and Tomáš Šenkyřík met in 2018 at a conference and have been exchanging ideas ever since. While the most popular communication is a text, the most classic a handwritten letter, Vstal is an aural dialogue, not only between Ristić and Šenkyřík, but between Czechia and the Adriatic Sea.
Sometimes one can separate the distinct sounds of each artist’s locale, especially the biophanies of water and forest, until one remembers that such territories often neighbor each other, their sounds intermingling. At other times the collection creates a third place, a shared fiction, the equivalent of two people realizing that they have something in common. Vstal also includes unifying currents, including tendrils of music; the “view from above” of NASA satellite communications; and poem and song that hearken back to a time of different borders, or the lack thereof. Each artist is a parent (Šenkyřík famously sharing a photo of his son asleep on a bike on the cover of Jaro), while each acknowledges the shared parenthood of nature, which continues to cradle humanity despite humanity’s lack of appreciation.
The music dives below the water then rises above the waves; it crawls into the forest, then stands upright; it lifts itself up to the heavens and looks down on all that is below. A folk song refers to “humans swallowed by the ground,” a reference to lives lost in the Balkan immigration. Bodies nourish the soil as the old trees continue to grow, impassive. The tides rush in and out, the world continues to turn, empires rise and fall. Yet zeroing in, sea urchins go about their daily business while Ristić runs kitchen appliances. Scale is subjective, varying according to perspective. How short is a human lifespan compared to that of a forest or sea? And yet, what impact can a single life have on another?
The references to human suffering, especially those connected to the old Iron Curtain, cast a swath of sorrow across the recording, heard in the mournful violin. The forests are suffering too, as are the oceans and urchins. A bitter wind runs through “Melancholia” like an abandoned cause. In “Čudna šuma,” birds twitter above a low drone, upper and lower registers split by human song. When a woodpecker pecks for food, one thinks of the chasm between the woodpecker and a logger, one doing what it must, the other what it wants: again, the question of scale.
One artist is walking through “Pátek Sobota” while the other is splashing; or is one doing both? Either way, Ristić and Šenkyřík are engaging with their environment rather than exploiting it. Church bells ring in the distance, a reminder of responsibility in the face of vulnerability. The concept of koyaanisqatsi – life out of balance – permeates the sonic field. Yet this very dialogue proposes a new point of view, or perhaps a very old one: an interconnectedness across time and space, with roots that are not only physical, but spiritual.
Appearing in both “Mandrač” and the title track, a rooster and dog announce a new day. In the latter, they are joined by a choir, the human chorus meeting the dawn chorus, each expressing the holiness of sunrise and the potential it portends. (Richard Allen)
Tue Oct 22 00:01:04 GMT 2024