Diane Barbé - musiques tourbes

A Closer Listen

musiques tourbes (bog musics) is more than just an act of field recording; Diane Barbé‘s album is also an example of “field remembering” and recreation.  Divided between natural soundscape compositions and musical reflections, the album explores sounds that are often unheard and others that exist only in the imagination until they are brought to light.

With source material from the ponds of Camargue’s river deltas, “les marécageuses” is a worthy successor to Action Pyramid & Jack Greenhaugh’s Mardle: Daily Rhythms of a Pond.  While many folks enjoy dipping their heads underwater in oceans and lakes, ponds are their forgotten sibling.  Instead of brine shrimp, one hears “diving beetles, whirligigs, backswimmers, and many kinds of stridulating insects,” some as loud and brash as land animals.  The wind whips through the trees, but the residents of the pond go about their business, unaffected.  One can sense a storm on the horizon, the water fowl spreading the news before the first droplets fall.  In “les hululées” they let loose, and the boundary between humanity and biosphere is blurred. Barbé nicknames the members of Alien Kin ensemble “human sounders,” ceramic flutes partially melting into the soundscape, yet clearly identifiable as “other.”  One wonders what the local residents think, and if any of their utterances are responses to each other, or even attempted communications with the odd, invading kin. “les enlisées” muddies the water – literally – as an entire ecosystem has developed within the polluted artificial lakes of the Kahnsdorfer water treatment reservoir.  One does not expect to find life here in the orange waters, yet life was made possible by human interference.  Are the algae “happy?”  It would be difficult to make the case that the runoff from local coal mines was acceptable due to this small blossom; and yet one is grateful for the reminder that nature finds a way.

Bookending these tracks are two very different pieces, described as “biomimicry.”  Composed during the pandemic, these analogue synth explorations recall and try to recreate the biodiversity of Thai forests.  The opening of “le petit jardin de coupigny” is particularly pernicious, recalling the recent biomimicry of Kate Carr, as the sounds of crickets and cicadas are so uncannily realistic that they sound like field recordings fed through a processor, rather than studio creations.  Only those with particular experience in the field might be able to tell how accurate the patterns are to real-life behavior.  By imitating the cries of non-human creatures, the artist offers both respect and warning: protect the bog, for sounds unheard are still sounds of value.  (Richard Allen)