Kim Myhr/Lasse Marhaug album

ON THE SLIVER GLOBE

(Sofa Music)

8/10

SOFA553-MyhrMarhaug#6D7BD0DIn some ways this album is the obverse of the Splinter Orchestra opus I reviewed immediately before it. Where that one saw the players taken into the desert to interact with the environment and create a “field recording” of sorts, but one primarily of human inputs, On the Silver Globe come close to emulating an urban field recording, yet is made entirely by electronics and a guitar. Originally commissioned by the 2016 MetaMorf art biennale in Trondheim, it was crafted by Kym Myhr and Lasse Marhaug as an eight-channel piece (here remixed to stereo) in five movements.

Close your eyes and you are swept into a dark and ominous realm of repetitive mechanical sounds and otherworldly interventions. It is the sound of an environment at once familiar and alien, and its very familiarity makes its alienation all the more disturbing. Half remembered sounds of trains, traffic, thunder, rain or helicopters hover just beyond the point of being recognizable, while other sounds could be the feeding frenzy of a colony of ants magnified 10,000-fold (Part 3). Use it ambiently to send yourself (or someone else) quietly crazy, or immerse yourself in it as an almost Gothic narrative.

Link: https://www.sofamusic.no/album/silver-globe