DRONAEMENT

Fields.1

CD, fields muzick

The eight pieces contained in this CD (and with a packaging as neat as this one and professional labelwork such as done here, I don’t want to make a difference between a CDR and a CD.) start from a sound or a bundle of sounds that could have been picked up anywhere. Some are bird calls or field recordings, others might be instruments recorded, while the rest is music recorded by other means. For two tracks Andrea Marutti and Aidan Baker have created basic sounds. Does it really make a difference where the sounds originally came from or how they were processed and deformed, manipulated and remixed? Isn’t the sound coming out of my amplifieres or my headphones the only thing that counts? I’d like to solve that problem the same way, I want to solve the problem of judging sounds aesthetically. A frequency that is within the aural range cannot be considered good or bad. (Except if it is so loud that it hurts or maims, then of course, that is something else.) Noise is not better or worse than the sounds from a piano. But let’s skip the theory in favor of the music.

Dronaement is able to mix real sounds with instruments and synthetic sounds in a fashion so warm, rich and beautiful that at times you’ll start to forget and just enjoy. Already the first song, with its interplay of birdsong, children playing, bongos and drums with various layers of laidback, background-synthie-music gives me a smile of freedom and joy. Not so much, though, that I’d be starting to get an interest in world music, esoteric theories or positive thinking. But I recognise beauty if it hits me over the head. Sometimes, at least, when there is not too much of everything else occupying my attention.

Some tracks are more on the noisier side (like “anduasende”), but most of them flow through various stages of harmonic and dissonant. It is clear, that drone owes a lot to industrial and ambient music, but, as I have mentioned, Dronaement has left the confines of a single genre behind. These days the interest seems to lie more on how sounds work together to create something beautiful and harmonious. Sounds and loops sway from left to right, back and forth. It is obvious that Marcus Obst aka Dronaement has spent a lot of time mixing these tracks. Then there are more percussive parts and others that have that special groove that I admire Dronemaent so much for. And of course there are also parts deftly diving into pure noise (as in field recording noise – check name of the label for info). But the main feat is how smooth and without any breaks or distortions all of these tracks are mixed into one another. At times I am sure I am already listening to a new track, but it isn’t true. In other instances you wouldn’t be able to tell where one track has ended and the second has started.

To imitate the sounds of nature in all their beauty, their slowly unfolding movement and their hidden pulse, that was the original target of new age music. Before it was drenched all in stupid keyboards and harpsichords, esoteric theories and smoke sticks. In a way “fields.1” involuntarily has evolved into new age music, but stripped of all the hippie-bullshit and pseudo-whatever-theories (I don’t want to call them either scientifical nor artistical) into music worse than industrially produced tracks for public elevators. The hour of music contained herein does almost the same to relax me as spending an afternoon at the races. But there is nothing that beats watching racecars speed by for four hours with all the trance inducing noise and steady movement.

“Fields.1”, hm – that sounds like the start of a series. I hope it is true.