AKOS
GARAI - pilis
(CD,
3leaves)
Artistic impressions of places are many in the world of
music, from the kitsch nostalgia of the “Donauwalzer” by Johann Strauss
to endless expand of the universe in “the planets suite” by Gustav Holst
(and not to forget its postmodern reworking by Greg Headly in “the operations of the heavens”.
Field recordings on the other hand do not only transport a sense of place in
artistic hyperbole but focus the vision of a place onto a single, very
special moment in space and time, with more or less manipulation. The grey
areas are endless. Now mix the two approaches to putting places into
auditive visions and you end up with what? Either an bricollage of found
sounds or an exercise in cutting and arranging.
Akos Garai went up on pilis mountain, close to
Budapest, in April 2009 and while walking down opened his perception to
nature, as well as his recording equipment, and came away with a new found
belief in the beauty of nature and the sacred radiance of a small patch of
unbridled nature. The single track on this CD takes us along a little stream
downwards of the small mountain in single steps of staying still an
listening. There is birdsong, manipulated noise of probably far away traffic
noise, some unrecognisable sounds and noises, some glitches, the wind in the
trees and again and again the sound of the water flowing downwards. It is
fascinating how many different sounds a little stream of water can make.
The structure is at one hand quite simple, more or less
manipulated sounds are split next to each other in chronological order but
in random length. Some of them longer and moving like electroacoustic
improvisation, others just static like a long deep breath or look around. On
the other hand it is not at all so simple, because there is movement and
evolution involved, and as much as anybody wants to discuss the fact, that
the brain will always try to find some connection between two pieces of
whatever put next to each other, hiking is by itself centered around the
idea of movement and the vision to find a new point of view. The field
recordings presented here as well as their manipulations and layers put on
and into them afterwards, are still connected to that single walk on that
special da.
Taking all of this together, I think that “pilis”
is not so much a musical project but a call to anybody to go out into the
nature and to experience themselves, what it is that this planet is
constantly doing for us. (Maybe send one copy to Barrack Obama and the rest
of the ministers that spoiled the Copenhagen treaty.) Or maybe this
resolution comes from the fact, that it is a beautiful day outside today and
I feel the longing to get out in the green and get some fresh, cold winter
air.
