Jim Haynes, Kamchatka, Contour Editions, CE.CD_0003 (2012)
Kamchatka! – one of the world’s last great unknown territories in the Russian Federation, this peninsula on the Ring of Fire in the North Pacific holds a special fascination for many for different reasons: it’s a land of mighty mountains, active volcanoes, hot springs and geysers, and earthquakes in a cold northern latitude, a land where some of the world’s largest carnivores (the Kamchatka subspecies of brown bear) roam and a land that hosted military bases during Soviet rule (1917 – 1991) so that it was closed off to foreigners and only people with special military clearance could enter. I imagine Kamchatka as a great unspoilt wilderness on the very edge of the world, never having been there of course. Neither has US improv artist Jim Haynes but his unfamiliarity with the region has not stopped him from imagining it in two long soundscape pieces that make up this album dedicated to Kamchatka.
“Lilith” consists of recordings of crackly chattering noise, interference, tones, signals and snippets of human monologue and dialogue picked up by Haynes while dialling into radio shortwave bands. The sinuous piece that steadily unfurls is very beguiling and enigmatic. The second track “Rocks, hills, plains” is an excerpt of a soundtrack made for a film by Paul Clipson based on footage that fellow took on his first trip to Russia. Again this is a slowly evolving and sometimes very glacial creature that seems to deliberately conceal more than it reveals. Isolated crackles, crispy crumble and low moaning drone insinuate a vast expanse of forbidding physical environments, all high windswept and barren mountain ranges and plateaux, bathed in crisp cold air blowing down from the Arctic, and ringed by cold grey oceans that froth wildly and batter the cliffs with biting sea-spray.
This can be a very awe-inspiring work, very respectful (maybe a little too much so) of the region that holds Haynes in thrall. Yet I can’t help but feel that if he were to actually venture into Kamchatka, and quite deeply at that, maybe for years on end with no contact with any other humans (aagh!), to experience all its treasures and secret places, his imagination would truly be on fire and he would produce a mighty recording that captures the full sublime majesty of the region.
Contact: Contour Editions