U21 | darius ciuta | ld2i-(3)
ld2i-(3) : excerpt1
ld2i-(3) : excerpt2
format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies
all copies come with an additional art card on 300gr satin paper
release year : 2014
length : 73’14
tracks :
1. ld2i-(3)
status : still available
>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net
(Belgium) : 13 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 15 € (inc.postage)
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: info :
1. The condition was chosen that there should be an interval of at least 1.5 hour in between recording sessions.
2. The recordings were made during the daytime (11am – the earliest/6pm – the latest).
3. The sound sources were selected by activity – the most active of them were recorded.
4. The places where recordings were made were sky photographed by a mobile phone camera as a light source.
5. Every sound recordings has its own photo of lightness at that particular moment.
6. 24 recording situations were collected at different time of the day and with different intensity of light.
………………………
A. All recordings are grouped by their photo of light – from the lightest to the darkest.
They’re connected into one whole.
B. All recordings loose their succession in a common entirety which becomes a documentary of 5 days.
C. Final entirety of sounds is presented in its most natural form –
as a cycle of day (sun is rising in the morning and sets in the evening)…”the final result is dual”.
(darius ciuta, March 2013)
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: reviews :
The Curonian Spit, where Darius Ciuta’s l2di-(3) was recorded, is a 60-mile long shoal that extends from Klaipėda, Lithuania in the north to the Zelenogradsky District in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia in the south. It separates the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon — by only 1,300 feet in one spot — hosts numerous waterfowl thanks to its position along the migratory East Atlantic Flyway, and encompasses dense forests, meadows, wetlands, and all the species of insects and animals that thrive in such fertile places. Yet, at one point during the 18th century, due in part to the construction of war boats, the land had become so severely deforested that entire villages were buried under sand dunes blown inland by the region’s heavy winds and frequent storms. This is the place from which all of Ciuta’s sounds are derived, but it would be a mistake to call his album a field recording. Darius conceals and transforms many of his sounds, making provincial identification almost impossible, and he interjects enough man-made noise into the mix to make it clear that this is not meant to be a representation of the natural world. More importantly, the album’s single 74-minute track was arranged using photographs. Rather than create an illusion of geographical or chronological continuity, Ciuta chose to imitate both by composing with light.
The method used to construct l2di-(3) is as follows. Recordings were made between 11 AM and 6 PM every day and locations were chosen according to how active they were. A mobile phone was used to take pictures at each site, and Ciuta didn’t stop until he had 24 hours of audio and 24 corresponding photographs, which were subsequently laid out in order from the brightest shots to the darkest. This order is what gives the music its shape and color, though as Darius states in the liner notes, the results are not sequential, nor do they represent a complete day and night cycle.
They do, however, communicate a feeling of time and place, however abstract and impressionistic it might be. There is the sound of stones clicking together, dripping water, birds calling, twigs cracking and splintering and the surge of the ocean. Leaves hiss against Ciuta’s clothing and pine needles pop under his feet. Anonymous insects chirp and whistle in the night and the wind rushes through the grass and over the sand dunes, bringing with it the silence and stillness that seems to blanket the world in every direction.
Anyone who has camped in the woods or near the beach will recognize those sounds and that feeling of isolation. That feeling, along with the synthetic bass hits, fragments of radio interference, and other electronic commotions, is not unique to the Curonian Spit. The record is more abstract than that and deals more in broad, elemental qualities than specific identifiers. Its sections are quiet or loud, thin or dense, hushed or bold. They consist mainly of small, finely detailed noises carefully separated from one another, noises just strange enough to make distinguishing between the synthetic and the organic difficult. Ciuta imposes no narrative upon them, draws no overt connection to the Spit’s long and remarkable past, nor to any of its current environmental threats, and he advances only a brief poetic explanation for his process, one that is entirely unnecessary anyway. All the explanation l2di-(3) needs is in its cosmopolitan spirit and its austere beauty.
Lucas Schleicher
Dusted Magazine
Ciuta approaches the site recording game, on this recording, with a conception that, for me, raises the level of interest by providing a framework which incorporates time, light and space into the equation in a (idiomatic, to be sure) pre-conceived set of parameters regarding recording intervals, time of day, level of activity, sky conditions and light intensity among others. The recordings, thus made, were also assembled by a set of rules created intuitively by Ciuta. Few if any of these are overtly manifest for the listener at home, but there’s something (again, for me) intellectually comforting in knowing that Ciuta took such care and precaution and had a working idea that was meaningful to him, which in turn causes me to attempt to come to grips with it, to hear the results through his ears. The recordings were made on the Curonian Spit, a kind of thin barrier reef near the border of Lithuania and Poland, enclosing a lagoon. The results sound more composed than, say, the Loren Chasse album (U22), but also somehow more mysterious, cloudier, though with the strong sense of something solid lurking in the mist. The sounds are less spectacular but more evocative. They’re very transparent, with a great range of crisp to vague textures and a huge range of color, even if there’s a muted, brownish-grey tinge to the tracks. The clocks of pebbles, some oddly trumpet-like trills, muffled booms–they’re all positioned on the edge of assimilation, of being understood in context, but never quite get there, happily. I’ll complain slightly and opine that the disc might have been more powerful if it cut off after about 40 minutes instead of running its full 70+, but I guess you make your conceptual bed and then lie in it. As is, “l2di-(3)” (no explanation of the title is given) is an unusual and very rewarding example of what can be accomplished when site recordings are laid atop an idea. Well done.
Brian Olewnick
Just Outside
This might very well the longest release on Unfathomless so far, clocking in at seventy-three minutes. A long time ago, Darius Ciuta worked as Naj and as such had a release on Pure/RRRecords, but since working with field recordings he calls himself by the name his parents gave him. He is from Lithuania and he recorded at Curonian Spit the sound material he uses here. The cover lists a bunch of conditions, such as there should be ‘an interval of at least 1,5 hour in between recording sessions’ and that they ‘were made during daytime (11 am – the earliest/6 pm – the latest) etc and that all recordings ‘are grouped by their photo of light – from lightest to the darkest’. This process took five days and presents a cycle of a day (less the night). Not a lot of releases on Unfathomless go this far to describe the concept. So, cut together as one piece it’s not easy to ‘follow’ the conceptual guidelines as set out by Ciuta. It all sounds like an environmental work, and if you listen superficially it may sound like an uncut piece of nature sounds, but if you listen more closely you can hear all these edit points, changing over the course of this piece. Lots of insect sounds, crackling of leaves, and maybe birdcalls. It makes all together quite a fascinating environment. You can listen to this very concentrated, like you would when listening to something that requires your full attention, or you just could simply walk around, take a nap, read book or have a phone conversation, or even mix it with your environment, by opening your window. True music of ambience I’d say.
Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly
Unfathomless 