Album (NEW FOCUS RECORDINGS FCR360) of two discrete halves from Lei Liang, Chinese-born composer based in San Diego.
His Hearing Landscapes is all electronics, making extensive use of the human voice; it’s saying something about the landscape for sure, but refracted through the ancient culture of Chinese landscape painting, also including references to the folk music of his own country, and his understanding about underwater acoustics. He has a residency at the Qualcomm Institute in California, where they’re using the latest tech to probe and better understand the environment; probably this is how Lei Liang got his field recordings from the ocean surface of the Chukchi Sea. Delicacy and poise, coupled with deep respect for nature and Mother Earth, could be said to characterise the music of Hearing Landscapes, and he strives to involve the listener by his ingenious use of spatialised stereo fields, without making a huge fetish out of audio technology. Absorbing, occasionally beautiful; he manages to sublimate his ideas well and create a simpatico portrait of a lonely planet whose life hangs in the balance.
On the second half Hearing Icespaces, that “deep respect” side to his work has been passed over to three performing players David Aguila, Terese Diaz de Cossio, and Myra Hinrichs, who use trumpet, flute and violin to respond to the sound environment which Lei Liang proposes, with his field recordings of the arctic ice around Alaska. Wind, ice, animals – not only creating diverse and astonishing sounds, but also reminding us once again about the fragility of existence. “Liang’s investment in this sonic world is an act of deep empathy for this threatened environment,” as the press note has it. As they respond to these sounds, the trio of musicians find a way to co-exist with the ice and the wind, imitating the sounds they hear, and effectively using the field recordings as a form of prepared score. Hearing Icespaces takes a long time – nearly one hour – to complete its processes, but for this duration you will be transported to another place. (15/02/2023)