G*Park
Sub
USA 23FIVE 23FIVE 018 CD (2013)
G*Park is the musique concrète project of American artist Marc Zeier, and this item is two discs of brutal, detourned field recordings. Zeier is a member of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe, and when interviewed by Chain D.L.K. website, describes Sub thus: “the manifestation of amorphous conditions that lead (or interfere with) representational forms or states of being”. Okay then. Let me give you an overview of how Zeier does this.
On disc one, there is an overarching feeling of everything being submerged. Zeier uses actual sounds of submersion. You imagine him weighed down on a scuba diving excursion with as much waterproof electronic recording equipment as he can hold. There are some approximations of a submarine’s echo locator pings and the suspicion that a lot of these sounds are made through a diver’s respirator. On the second track, the sounds develop into things breaking off other things. Possibly ice. The sound of icebergs calving? Or rock-falls while pot-holing? The third track features the sound of demolition recorded from one end of a very long tunnel. The next piece augments all of this with a loud burst of static and an electric motor accelerating. Tents unzipping. The final track sounds like a cloudswarm of bees which cranks up the anxiety factor. Throughout there are dispersed sudden sound events of tape rewinds, rock crushing, distant buzzing, often much higher in the mix, cloudy, hidden, obscured. I’m imagining a graphic score of irregular grids where the intersecting lines denote each sound event.
The second disc starts with a queasy tape manipulation effect, a computer process effect that sounds to me like Windows Sound Recorder used to sound like when you slowed files down. Then a jet aeroplane engine powering up. I don’t know where G*Park is taking us but we’re not off to Marbs for a beach holiday that’s for sure. Somewhere populated by giant robotic insects perhaps. The second piece is like a deep sea gamelan. Or the slowed down sounds of a marina at night. The third track pairs nocturnal wildlife and moving crockery about, while the next foregrounds burning/smouldering ashes, wind noise and very effective reverse effects.
All this is shot through with a cloudy veil of paranoia. So if you like your field recordings with a healthy splash of disquiet, Sub really delivers.
This information-free cd comes encased in a nice slip cover – no track titles, no timings, but there is a cryptic list of things (not people) Zeier wants to thank: “a singing chimney”, “some happy pigs from Chants” and “a drowning Piemonese wasp” being only the first three.