From the same label that brought us Expended Desert, we have an anthology or compendium of sounds from an international cadre of sound art “greats” – Vincent Jehanno, Alice Kemp, BRB>Voicecoil, Leif Elggren, Jeph Jerman, Yeast Culture, Aliénor Golvet, and Anne Gillis. The title is Et Si C’était Le Vent Qui Avait Raison (FERNS RECORDINGS ferns_stem_16), a phrase which by rights ought to have been plucked from the pages of a French poet, philosopher, or surrealist, and even the cover art isn’t too far away from a drawing by André Masson.
Somehow it feels a little pointless to single out individual creators when the whole set is programmed to deliver a maximal charge of disorientation and dream-like mystery, but here goes anyway. There is Alice Kemp, the UK fright-meister, who turns in a three-minute Frankenstein nightmare on ‘Maiden Hairs a Dimly Lorn’; she produced similar hair-tingling results when she threw two tracks into the witch’s cauldron that was On Corrosion in 2020. Even her title is like a supernatural English folk song going to the bad; and the speaking voices that emerge from her tape will keep you wide awake in terror.
BRB>Voicecoil is Kevin Wilkinson, also called Penthouse, who gives a grim caste to the beauties of Mother Nature on his contribution ‘The Wind’; what lurks in the trees waiting to swoop down on us flying on black wings? American out-there loner Jeph Jerman is still evidently wandering the deserts of his home country and rattling sticks to vibrate the unseen cosmic forces into action, but on his ‘Datura’ he also seems to have brought a battery-operated synth which he operates by way of a rusty bicycle wheel. In another life, Jerman would have been asked to join a late incarnation of The Magic Band – and he would have refused the commission!
I also find myself intrigued by the notion of ‘A Molten Glowing Snail’ which is the semi-comical apparition that troubles the eyes and ears of Yeast Culture, and they attempt to express their mental trauma with a dense and layered collage-barrage of electronic swurps and random samples. I find that Yeast Culture is a conclave of Seattle DJs and field-recording types who began their project in the mid 1980s, producing visual and aural delights from their warehouse studio space in that town; they might not be active as a collective now and this hymn to the humble snail, possibly severely affected by radiation, may be drawn from their archive of unreleased bungerings. Vincent Jehanno is another French contributor, possibly a newcomer, not exactly prolific in the back catalogue department, may run a tiny label called Silo Editions. His ‘De Ce Qui Reste’ is uncertain and half-formed, but shows great promise and its unexpected corners and by-ways help to set the menu for this tableau, which is why he occupies track 1.
The great Anne Gillis is here with ‘Raison De Moi’; I bought a copy of her Archives Box set from the Japan label Art Into Life, which surveys her very individual approach to sound art from 1983 onwards, and it took me years to even begin to understand what she was doing. Here, in 4:32 mins, she attempts to establish proof of her own identity – her “reason of myself” if you will – by breathing into a microphone at close quarters, gradually inching away from wordless sound into making a tentative utterance, composed of broken words spoken in a broken tongue. In less than five mins, a short lecture on how the culture of language evolved in the human race. (04/03/2024)