The legendary British label Touch has just released a new work by Polish composer and sound sculptor Michal Jacaszek. The general idea of Michal’s approach is a combination of classical music and modern electronic textures. Gardenia in this case, is a bit different from his previous work. This time, the main sound source of the album is field recordings.
Last year, he went to an annual art residency Sonic Mmabolela in South Africa, curated by famous Spanish sound artist and scientist Francisco Lopez. Right next to the Botswana border, there is a place called Mmabolela, located at a big private nature reserve in the Limpopo province, covering 6500ha of a subtropical savanna and a part of the Limpopo River. It is easy to imagine how rich the sonic environment of this far land can be! Hours of recordings of birds, insects, frogs, trees, bushes, grass, as well as stones and shells have been digitally reworked and rearranged into nine tracks of highly concentrated and beautiful atmospheric music.
It is necessary to stress that Gardenia by Jacaszek is not typical music for chilling and relaxation, based on the sounds of wild nature mixed with melodic ambient or new age. It is a much more interesting and serious sound research of a skillful compositional approach to minimal electronica, abstract melodic clusters, soft noises and ambiences, acoustic sounds flavored partly by enlightened melancholic moods. According to Michal’s notes on the album, his intention was “not to document the sound world of South Africa or to create something conceptional… All I do in my work is an affirmation of beauty hidden in various aspects of the Creation”.
Author: Alexei Borisov
