Description
Release Date Friday 2nd May 2025
All pre-orders will be dispatched/made ready for collection on that day.
SIDE A
MICHELLE HELENE MACKENZIE & STEFAN MAIER
‘ORCHID MANTIS’ (24:32)
Orchid Mantis, by Michelle Helene Mackenzie and Stefan Maier, is a work that draws
its inspiration from the history of the Sanzhi Pod City, in northern Taiwan. Sanzhi Pod
City was built from 1978 onwards, made up of buildings constructed from assemblages
of ‘pods’ inspired by the futuro houses of Finnish architect Matti Suuronen. The
project was abandoned in 1980, following a number of accidents during construction
and persistent rumours that the site was haunted. However, this wasteland of a
city has allowed insects to proliferate, in particular five species of orchid mantis.
It is this strange environment, made up of utopian buildings, proliferating insects
and vegetation reclaiming the site, that serves as the imaginary space for Michelle
Helene Mackenzie and Stefan Maier’s music, a music of carefully designed pace and
progression, drawing, through resonance and stridulation, subtle sonic materials that
guide and accompany us into multiple worlds with admirable ease and grace.
SIDE B
OLIVIA BLOCK ‘BREACH’
(15:54)
Breach, by American composer Olivia Block, engages in a dialogue between field
recordings and synthesised sounds, creating a vibrant plea for wild spaces that face
an ever-growing threat to their survival from human activities. The work is based
on recordings collected in the San Ignacio lagoon in the Mexican part of Southern
California. This lagoon is known as a breeding ground for eastern Pacific grey whales.
With the help of precise electronics, the music unfolds like a drift, depicting the
subjective soundscape of whales caught up in the noise of the Anthropocene. The
composer uses otoacoustic emissions in particular, representing the sound saturation
caused by humans in the habitat of these large marine mammals. Going beyond a
merely descriptive dimension, Olivia Block manages to transcend her subject to offer
a fascinating musical form that engages the listener in a constantly renewed way.
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