A Closer Listen
Natasha Barrett tells stories in sound. Her new album uses field recordings as a starting point, then obscures and in some cases enhances the original recordings in the service of a higher cause. These “ambisonic” pieces not only reflect the world, but comment upon it.
The album begins with “Impossible Moments from Venice 3: The Other Side of the Lagoon.” Barrett’s ongoing series continues to intrigue. In this entry, her concern is the contrast between the everyday activity on and above the lagoon and the threats beneath it: muddied waters, rising seas. After an initial sound of laughter, crashes and crunches interrupt the flow of the water. Disruptive motorboats bisect the recording, roaring against the aching piers, drowning out the sound of seagulls. By amplifying seldom heard sounds and softening typical foregrounds, Barrett suggests that the unheard, unspoken and unaddressed may be more important than the seemingly placid everyday. One might liken the piece to the scene in a shark movie before the swimmers realize there’s a shark. Might slowly rising seas ever seem so immediate?
On “Glass Eye,” Barrett comments on surveillance technology, an ever-increasing threat to free expression. Protest sounds are sampled, filtered, manipulated and controlled until they lose all context and power: a parable of dictatorial conquest. The words “shame on you” are sucked into the ether. The sound of a gun being cocked is transformed into texture. The signal becomes the noise; the initial injustices are obscured. The glass eye turns to us all. After this, “Ghosts of the Children” seems even more chilling, a hauntological exercise during which one is compelled to inquire how the children became ghosts in the first place.
The return of the swifts in early spring ~ perhaps coincidentally, this very week ~ is cherished throughout Italy, the overhead sounds a return of life and three-dimensional sound. Troubled by the world, Barrett took comfort from “The Swifts of Pesaro,” converting their cries into an electro-acoustic symphony. The piece provides a break in the anxious soundscape before the final plunge. The final quarter-hour piece is meant as an aural corollary to Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Earth from Above, palatable art that allows the viewer – in this case, the listener – to encounter the heart of darkness without being overwhelmed. The seas are rising, protests are quelled, and we are all being watched; but on the other hand, we are watching and reporting right back.
The abrasion of “Toxic Colour” is meant to disturb and alarm; it would be hard for a pure field recording to spark such a reaction. Even when Barrett relents, she uses a buzzing fly: nature as annoyance, ruined by man. One begins to imagine the running water as runoff, perhaps a toxic green. In telling her stories, she imagines an even more degraded future, a dystopia which will occur should we allow it to unfold. (Richard Allen)
Thu Mar 27 00:01:27 GMT 2025