U42 | Jared Sagar | Holme
Holme_excerpt 1
Holme_excerpt 2
format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies
all copies come with an additional art card on 300gr satin paper
release year : 2017
length : 34’42
tracks :
Holme
status : still available
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(Belgium) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 15 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 16 € (inc.postage)
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: info :
The field recordings of ‘Holme‘ were made from Jan/Feb of 2016. Due to being on a very tight budget all these sounds were recorded onto a Tascam DR-05, a portable, lightweight, handheld device, and then arranged with computer software. I wanted to retain the original sound as much as possible, while still manipulating it in some way. I also did not want these recordings to be ‘normal’ recordings of wind, sea, etc, I needed to put my mark on it. The longish drones heard throughout the piece are various sounds of the wind and the distant sea rumbling in the background.
Holme is situated on the coast, full of whispering amber sand, soft beds of dunes, and at the heart of all this there is a nature reserve, one is open access, the other is less accessible, for extreme nature lovers wanting to bird watch. There is a trail that leads around the reserve taking you in and out through different worlds. Inland you have density…birds…rabbits even, making homes out of the flat, isolated fields nearby. You can easily walk out to the sea in no time at all, this reserve has a noisy neighbour, crashing then whispering next to these quieter fields. This long trail stretches as far as the eye can see. It eventually stops near the second reserve, where a small wooded area is situated. It feels odd having a woodland so close to the sea, but that is part of its charm, its beauty, its mystique.
(Jared Sagar, April 2016)
: reviews :
Most of us love going to the beach, and proclaim that we love its sounds ~ wind, sea, surf. But how closely do we actually listen? Sound artist Jared Sagar takes a sonic microscope to the sounds of Holme, where woodlands and a nature reserve snuggle up to the sea, offering up a vast cornucopia of sonic possibilities. His single-track soundscape zeroes in and zooms out, capturing minute fragments of sound as well as unifying drones that can be heard from all three locations.
Thanks to light manipulation, Sagar is able to isolate certain sounds while reducing the interference of others, creating a fictional soundscape that is more comprehensive than a simple reflection. These are the sounds that one might hear on a trip to the coast, but not in these amounts, and not with this much variety. Real-time coastal explorations include long passages of slowly-evolving seascape, minute variations in birdsong, indiscernible shifts of wind. While walking, one may decide, “I like this sound or that”, without veering far from human-made paths. (To test this theory, simply trace the footprints in the sand, typically near the wrack line parallel to the shore.) But what of the whistle through a hollowed log? Or the soft retreat of passive water from the lip of a dune? Or the popping bubbles of sea foam?
Holme is a quiet recording, which camouflages its occasional sonic retreats. The sounds are layered atop each other in a manner that suggests sediment: sand on stones on solid slabs. Dig a bit deeper, and one will encounter the textures of the shore. Two-thirds in, one hears what sounds like a steam engine, but is likely something else: a natural phenomenon that bends the ear. Of all the surprises of the shore, this is the day’s unidentified gem: a rustle worth the walk to encounter. Sagar’s love letter impresses on the listener what locals knew all along: there’s no place like Holme.
Richard Allen
A Closer Listen
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So far Jared Sagar has eleven album available, but all in the digital domain, and was as such not reviewed in these pages before. Check out Discogs where to find these. Sagar is from the UK, and I am not sure if he is from the area where he did the recordings for ‘Holme‘, being Holme-next-to-sea, Norfolk, as I read in the information that “Due to being on a very tight budget all these sounds were recorded onto a Tascam DR-05, a portable, lightweight, handheld device, and then ar-ranged with computer software”, so what would he bring if the budget would be bigger?
Although much of this sounds like the recordings ‘as they are’, Sagar writes that there is some manipulation, among others of using long drone sounds from wind and the distant sea. I have not been to this area in the UK, and although the weather conditions right now call for a holiday, it will have to wait, but being to coastal shores before, in various countries, the sound of the wind, sea, birds, the crackling of bush as the wind goes through it, it all sounds familiar here. It re-calls holidays that are kept in the family photo album, early pages, in black and white, but that’s just a private observation on my behalf when hearing this music. I can imagine for other people there will other observations to be made. Sagar‘s thirty-five minute composi-tion is one of on-going sound events, the drone in the background as it were, and more collage-like bits on top. While those cut in, appear for a while, and cut or fade out, the rest stays on course and sometimes all of this stops and something else starts. The flow is quite gentle in this piece; nothing is overtly abrupt or strange here. It is a piece of music that consists of snapshots of the area and one sees some con-necting lines on these pages. Perhaps not too surprising but clearly made with a love and knowledge for the area.
Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly
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