Seen To Remain (Kirigirisu Recordings kgr049) is by Fletina, the Scottish sound artist who’s dedicated to making field recordings of the environment in an extremely low-key manner.
We heard their Causal EP from 2023 which didn’t make much of an impression with its empty, distant murmurings, but that might be the key to understanding the aesthetic and motivations of this creator. Today’s record does have much more substance, grain, texture, and even some eventful moments – admittedly very small and hard-to-discern. If these are collages, as we’re informed, it’s hard to see the joins in the continuous purr and empty buzz. Fletina has a broad sweep and wants to capture indoors and outdoors, tiny rooms and large countryside or urban scapes, small household objects as well as entire cities, hillscapes, and other geo-features; they like the grind of machinery, although often they want to push it into the background.
All of this has the strange effect of pushing human beings out of the picture too; each of these seven audio snapshots seem, to me, to depict a world now bereft of mankind, everyone dead or mysteriously vanished after an alien event on a grand scale. (Although some muffled human voices do briefly waft in from the other side on ‘Temporal Installation’.) Come to think of it, if put together with a carousel slide show of suitable images and shown in a darkened room, Seen To Remain would make a great art installation. (31/10/2024)