U40 | Rihards Bražinskis & Raitis Upens | Aldaris
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format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies
all copies come with an additional art card on 300gr satin paper
release year : 2017
length : 36’25
status : still available
>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net
(Belgium) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 15 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 16 € (inc.postage)
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: info :
Filled with ethno-grief and admiration at the same time, “Aldaris” is a mental time travel back to such a mighty and noble age in Riga when the factories rumbled, stone houses rose up one after another and the whole city rapidly turned from a fusty medieval fortress into the modern layout of the city we still live in. It’s an adoration of a great socially economical prosperity which existed not so long ago, but quite unbelievable from the current perspective.
The historical factory of the beer brewery Aldaris (The Brewmaster in Latvian) had its inception around the year 1865. It’ a living monument of brick architecture of the industrial era which preserves and silently retells the Latvian land’s legacy of the past 150 years. Nowadays this total glory stands contrastingly in a midst of a quite humble and remote outskirt named Sarkandaugava (Red river Daugava in Latvian).
The whole territory of the factory is organized in quarters of buildings – very characteristic style of that time. Although many of the original buildings has been rebuilt or even demolished, the common look remains largely intact. The specific building we made our recordings in was neglected since 1976 till the renovation started in 2014.
During the repairing period we had the luck to freely interact with the old beer kettles made in year 1938 which now are part of Aldaris beer museum located there. Also we recorded a beer brewing process in the same building and surrounding atmospheres in the whole area. Recordings were made in several stages with the last and most extensive session hold on March 1, 2015 and thus precisely matching the release date of this CD.
As far as we’re concerned this should be the first beer related work in the world of field recording based audio expressions. And it’s an honor it’s hosted in such an important country in beer culture as Belgium. Enjoy!
(Rihards Bražinskis, February 2017)
: reviews :
We recently noted a pleasant electronica record from Selffish, who happens to be from Riga and whose field recordings of that area aided his psychological recovery in some way, to the extent that he layered the Riga sounds into his own music. Well, here’s another Riga-centric piece, this time from the team of Rihards Bražinskis and Raitis Upens. They made Aldaris (UNFATHOMLESS U40) in Riga using the sounds of Riga, but mainly they intend the piece as a tribute to the former greatness of Riga, a time when the place used to be a bustling hive of industry. It was a time when a man could stand tall and cast a long shadow, or at least draw a decent salary from working in the factories. The creators, misty-eyed to some degree, identify this as “a mighty and noble age” and look back wistfully on these days of “great socially economical prosperity”. To realise this socio-political statement, they set up location recordings in an old beer brewery in Aldaris – hence the name of the recording.
What they don’t point out is that this location is now the Aldaris Beer Museum, presumably a highly popular site for tourists on the Riga trail. The promotional blurb for this museum speaks warmly of “the diversity and charm of beers brewed in Latvia” and tells us that the interior works of the brewing hall have been “untouched since 1938”. I can see why this would strike a note with any conscientious artist, and it’s to the credit of this duo that they’ve made a creditable effort with this sound art statement of theirs. It’s subtle, but I think their intention has been fairly well realised; we begin with recognisable sounds of machinery at work (what they’re doing is not entirely clear), which eventually gives way to wistful and nostalgic ambient musical tones, thereby suggesting the glories of the past 20th century to the listener and remind us of what has been lost in the vagaries of capitalism. In this, the piece hopes to achieve what they describe as “mental time-travel”.
Now, a couple of observations: the intention is very similar, if not identical, to what was proposed by Sala on Scare Me Not, his recordings of Utena which was also released this year on the same label. The main difference is that Sala, with his recordings of a site littered with decrepit Soviet machines, was aiming for a gloomy meditation on decay; Aldaris is, at least, somewhat more positive about what the past represents to us, and its creators are clearly sorry to see the passing of the beer factory and this machinery. That is the first observation. The second observation would be that this sublimation of time and place is something which pertains to just about every release I’ve heard on this label; each project may start life as a documentary field recording, but it soon passes into the contemplation of metaphysical matters, things unseen, intangible elements. Indeed I have before me a hand-written note from the label owner in which he hopes that I “have some galvanising audio-journey”. The challenge which all these artists set for themselves is how they can convey these subjective and fleeting impressions on a recording. To learn how Rihards Bražinskis and Raitis Upens do it, hear this record. 200 numbered copies, from 2nd May 2017.
Ed Pinsent
The Sound Projector
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Here is the first of two new submissions from the phonography focused label Unfathomless. Founded and run by the tireless Daniel Crokaert, Unfathomless challenges sound artists to create work based around a physical space. As Crokaert puts it, the work should evoke the spirit of a specific place, “crowded with memories, its auras and resonances and our intimate interaction with it…” As of now, Unfathomless seems to be taking precedence over its sister label, Mystery Sea (also run by Crokaert), likely because it seems to allow for a more diverse output, expanding on the dark ocean drones that populate the Mystery Sea releases.
For the better part of last year I spent my time working as a bartender for a brewery in Vancouver’s “Yeast Van” brewery district. Although most of my time there was dedicated to front of house, I got to know the basics of the beer making process as well. As someone with more than a fleeting interest in field recording and sound, I was frequently enamoured by the strange and enriching sounds that came from the process of brewing beer. Whether it was the bubbling and churning from the boil, the vacuous pings from the inside of empty tanks and kegs, or the hissing drones from Carbon dioxide canisters, there was a lot of intriguing sound to get lost in.
Rihards Bražinskis and Raitis Upens take this idea and run with it. On Aldaris, the two captured record-ings from a 150 year old brewery in Riga, Latvia, and wove them into a 36 minute sound piece. According to the Unfathomless site, the duo were given freedom to interact with the 80-year-old beer kettles, which, no doubt allowed for a substantially richer final product. From the opening seconds it sounds like the two making use of these kettles, as slowly, bass-heavy creaks and rumbles fill out a pleasant low-end. From here the sound only intensifies, reaching a small earthquake-like magnitude by the 7 minute mark.
In my experience with field recording work, the most potent albums abide by, more or less, one of two artistic approaches. Either a work is steadfast in its use of explicitly unaltered, unprocessed field recordings, or, moderate liberties are taken in editing and processing as a way to accent a given work. On the other hand, albums of this type that heavily obscure the source of their sounds really don’t do it for me.
Bražinskis and Upens avoid the pitfalls of heavy-handedness. Their editing approach seems to respect that their audience has the patience to hear how Aldaris subtly shifts over its duration. The transitions here are especially choice, namely the punctuated blasts of soft noise that guide the piece into its second movement (starting at 7:59). The album’s mid-section, with its skittering, almost free-jazz like tactility and haunting, fever-pitched drones, evokes all the feeling of being squarely within an ancient ruin. Or, in the case of Aldaris, speaks to a great industry that has risen and fallen, and a land that is forever at the mercy of time’s reclamation.
Adrian Dziewanski
The Alcohol Seed
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The abandoned landscape holds a particular allure for field recording artists, because an abandoned landscape is not an abandoned soundscape. This point is hammered home (pun intended) by Rihards Bražinskis and Raitis Upens as they rattle around an old brewery.
There’s little of the expected brewery sound in Aldaris, which initially comes across as a romp through debris ~ the shaking of metal grated fences and tapping on empty metal canisters. The brewery is empty, closed, abandoned ~ no more beer, no more community, no more laughter. And as a result, Rihards Bražinskis & Raitis Upens are angry, upset and intrigued. Now they are able to play in ways they’d never imagined, save perhaps in their most inebriated dreams. And play they do. Once they’ve finished with the gate, they enter the brewery itself, and are given access to the beer museum (which may or may not include samples of ancient brew). The old kettles are put to good use: no longer containers, but percussion. Then thanks to a recent renovation and incredibly good tim-ing, the men are allowed to record the new brewery in action (during which time they are not allowed to break anything). The pops, hisses and clanks that ensue are nearly sci-fi in nature, the machinery reflecting Riga’s industrial architecture. But from this point on, the recording seems non-linear. When seven minutes remain, we finally hear the beer. One would like to imagine Bražinskis & Raitis Upens sneaking in after hours to play a little bit more, the result of too much celebration. Even if the old Latvian brewmeisters would disapprove of such behavior, they would be honored by the fact that the duo combines old and new, museum and brew, building a bridge across the ages.
Richard Allen
A Closer Listen
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A review that starts with ‘I’m not sure if I heard of this/these person(s)’ happens a lot, much to some ridicule (‘he has no clue that he wrote about him three times before; it’s all a rush job’), but here I’m pretty sure, simply because these names are difficult to write if one wants to avoid spelling mistakes; Rihards Brazinskis and Raitis Upens are from Latvia and in a beer brewery called Aldaris they made their record-ings. Apparently the brewery still exists even when I had the impression we are dealing with a particular rusty place, but in other instances this factory seems very much alive. That might of course be the way they recorded their basic material. Of course you wouldn’t know if this was a beer brewery or an abandoned factory of any other kind, but I am sure that is also not really important as you can read about that on the cover of this release. The journey they undertook in this factory reveals some rusty (sorry) barrels, water running, a big hall, the rattling of fences and balustrades, overlooking that part of the factory where they keep the big kettles, the sound of air pressure and all of this with some highly vibrating sound going on.
The various recordings are cut and spliced together, maybe even looped from time to time, but not further processed I would say, although I am also not sure about that. I would like to believe that everything here is the result of extensive layering and collaging of sounds recorded in this brewery.
These two men do a great job in creating an excellent composition of field recordings of one location, forming a complete picture, well perhaps, of that place and everything lasts just long enough to be exciting, before moving on to the next part of our guided tour. This is an excellent release, one that fits very well in the catalogue of Unfathomless.
Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly
Unfathomless 