U52 | Frédéric Nogray | Ondureñas
1. Punta Bujaja_excerpt
2. Pico Bonitissimo_excerpt
format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies
all copies come with an additional art card on 300gr satin paper
release year : 2018
length : 53’00
tracks :
1. Punta Bujaja
2. Pico Bonitissimo
status : still available
>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net
(Belgium) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 15 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 16 € (inc.postage)
~
: info :
In darkness, with the shadows of the forest, bite of the plant is the tear. Intimate inner worlds and the surrounding materiality dance in unison. They snake through realities at the speed of blood. Blood is the vine. Vine bites the flesh and atomic particles flow. Pulses emerge within this motionless journey. They give life to it. They are its spark and the vehicle. By inversion of scales they also are the outcome. Sound, sounds from the many layers of the thickness of reality form a new acoustic landscape. In its turn, this soundscape spreads around, following and creating waves. However these nascent waves are here since ever, hidden in the folds of time. Light gets ready for the new day to come.
~
C’est dans l’obscurité, dans le ventre de la forêt, que la morsure de la plante se fait faille. Les mondes intimes et la matérialité environnante dansent un unisson. Ils serpentent au travers des réalités au rythme du sang, de ce sang qui s’est fait liane, de cette liane qui mord la chair pour en faire jaillir les particules atomiques. Les pulses accompagnent cet immobile voyage. Elles le provoquent, en sont l’étincelle et le véhicule. Par inversion d’échelle, elles en sont aussi les résultantes. Le son, les sons présents dans les différentes strates de l’épaisseur du réel forment un nouveau paysage acoustique qui a son tour se déploie au rythme de nouvelles ondes naissantes et pourtant là depuis toujours, tapies dans les replis du temps. La lumière se pare, se fard en attendant le petit jour.
(Frédéric Nogray, 12 September 2018)
Part 1
Unveiling another world, or when minute, minimal oscillations seem to drive us
beyond inhospitality, and asceticism, across the dense Vegetable,
towards some sort of feverish and creeping bliss…
Listening numbs, simultaneously enlivens, and seeks to be a rite of passage…
While more and more mindful of natural signals, of this tropical language, getting lost is also better reunite…
Shrill chants, throbbing, intermingled with tiny analog emergences…
chants inviting to reach a something,
this rallying point as well as a caesura…
Part 2
Beyond Us, somewhat settled down bass modulations extend the bewitchment…
one is surely elsewhere, and so much here, in the comfort of acceptance…
however a non protected zone, an area of second breath, and liberation…
Stridences, howlings, random roar of insects, light lapping, bird serenades, the breath of jungle…
A unique goal, the sense of oblivion and awe…
And when oscillations come back, more circular, closer to what they underlie,
it is only a necessary obliteration…the surge of a shift… daydream and deliverance…
~
Partie 1
Lever le voile sur un autre monde, ou quand d’infimes, minimales oscillations semblent nous guider
par-delà l’inhospitabilité, et l’ascèse, au travers du dense Végétal,
vers une sort d’extase fiévreuse et rampante…
L’écoute anesthésie, vivifie à la fois, et se veut initiatique…
Lorsque de plus en plus attentifs aux signaux naturels, à ce langage tropical, on finit par se perdre,
c’est pour mieux se retrouver…
Chants aigus, lancinants, entremêlés de fins affleurements analogiques…
chants qui invitent vers ce je ne sais quoi,
ce point de ralliement tout autant que de brisure…
Partie 2
Au-delà du Nous, de basses modulations quelque peu assagies prolongent l’envoûtement…
on est clairement ailleurs, et tellement ici, dans le confort de l’acceptation…
une zone cependant non-protégée, une zone de second souffle, et libératrice…
Des stridences, des hurlements, le vrombissement aléatoire d’insectes, le léger clapotis, les sérénades aviaires, la jungle qui respire…
Un but unique, le sens de l’oubli et de l’admiration…
Et lorsque les oscillations reviennent, plus circulaires, plus proches de ce qu’elles sous-tendent,
ce n’est qu’une oblitération nécessaire…le surgissement d’un décalage… un rêve éveillé et une délivrance…
(Daniel Crokaert, 30 June 2017 – translation by Sismophone)
: reviews :
~
Until I heard this release by Frédéric Nogray, I had never thought I could be held spellbound by the sounds of constant background insect chatter and the images they conjure up in the mind: scenes of tramping through thick forest; your face and neck oozing perspiration with your clothes soaked in it and sticking to your body in all the wrong places; your feet throbbing and sore in all the spots where they have practically fused to your socks and boots after wandering for what seems like hours in apparent circles. Yet here I am engrossed in this work, for the most part constructed from field recordings taken by the French artist in his travels through Honduras in Central America way back in 2012. (Meanwhile some distance outside my window, cicadas are rattling and throbbing quite noisily.) The rhythmic noises of the insects and other forest animals, for the most part instinctive and unplanned, yet in some ways predictable and for that reason comforting and hypnotic, dominate much of this recording. Occasionally birds of various species will intrude with their trilling calls and melodies. In a later track monkeys join the choir of insects and birds.
In addition to the field recordings, Nogray brings feedback, electronic instrumentation and acoustic sine waves created with crystal singing bowls: these sounds are introduced into the work gradually and eventually come to take centre stage without pushing the ambient noise recordings into second place. The quiet droning (of which part may be coming from the crystal bowls singing as they are being brushed) has an air of peaceful serenity. For all its apparent tranquillity and quiet confidence, this CD is actually very busy: there is always something happening and the music is constantly changing even at imperceptible levels. Your brain knows something is definitely going on that wasn’t happening five minutes ago but is hard put to pinpoint exactly when the change occurred because the change is on-going.
This is a very beautiful and calming, perhaps even psychologically healing, work – and yet it is troubling at the same time, as the source material for this CD comes from a country with the unenviable reputation of being the most violent country in the world, with high levels of gang warfare and criminal activities stemming from drug trafficking and political corruption within its borders, outside a war zone. All the more reason perhaps to treasure the sounds and natural music on “Ondureñas” and the world to which these beckon us.
Jennifer Hor
The Sound Projector
~
It’s late night, and the cicadas are out making for a blend of peace and quiet. There’s a slight chill in the air, and other slight disturbances, maybe some kind of hen or other proud bird – but Punta Bujaja is rather haunted. Of course this blends well with the season. The gentle rustling of the wild has a strangely balanced stillness. There’s a single long drone note that plays like a line being drawn that fades in and out of perception, reverberating like a content feline. These two lengthy recordings on Parisian sound artist Frédéric Nogray‘s Ondureñas are all about location, traveling to peaks and valleys. His paced work stretches out over nearly thirty-three minutes, changing in the warmer light. The birds’ sweet songs start at the first sign of light and the pulsing nodes wallows away allowing the natural sounds to envelop the listener. He explains:
Part 1
Unveiling another world, or when minute, minimal oscillations seem to drive us
beyond inhospitality, and asceticism, across the dense Vegetable,
towards some sort of feverish and creeping bliss…
Listening numbs, simultaneously enlivens, and seeks to be a rite of passage…
While more and more mindful of natural signals, of this tropical language,
getting lost is also better reunite…
Shrill chants, throbbing, intermingled with tiny analog emergences…
chants inviting to reach a something,
this rallying point as well as a caesura…
Nogray not only takes you to this tropical universe (perhaps Central America, maybe Honduras), the ear is fully immersed in the in-situ experience, you are lost in the brush, chattering insects and wild calls. On Pico Bonitissimo the location has changed, there is still lots of outdoorsy spirit, as if you are on an exotic camping trip, but we are by a bubbling brook that seems to be keeping pace, smoothing the higher pitch of the outside world. It’s amazing when you think of the natural world in terms of pitch, but water most definitely has a calming effect on the goings-on here. My mastiff, who normally doesn’t seem so effected by the sounds I play, has payed a certain attention to this record, he’s alert and bright-eyed. Who knew field recordings could have such a value-added bonus. Seriously.
Aside from canine cunning, the soothing blend of chirping, squawking and rustling waterways – along with the embedded mostly background (but centered) sinewaves – makes for a subtle dilation in aural gradients. The artist has been known to play sizable quartz bowls, so that may likely be the cyclical sound as well. Nogray waxes poetically:
Part 2
Beyond Us, somewhat settled down bass modulations extend the bewitchment…
one is surely elsewhere, and so much here, in the comfort of acceptance…
however a non protected zone, an area of second breath, and liberation…
Stridences, howlings, random roar of insects, light lapping, bird serenades, the breath of jungle…
A unique goal, the sense of oblivion and awe…
And when oscillations come back, more circular, closer to what they underlie,
it is only a necessary obliteration…the surge of a shift… daydream and deliverance…
And there you have it. A work that broadens our understanding of an ‘other’ location – one that brings about a semblance of the abundance of sound contained in nature, and how much we take for granted our personal space, peace and quiet. There’s a constant vibratory noise, wherever we are at all times, even in the most severe isolation. Nogray has found a special way to to help us better understand the wide birth of spatialization of earthen cultural studies. The very ending has him mimicking the outdoors. And it’s an awesome sound.
TJ Norris
Toneshift
~
As I was looking up some of the previous reviews of the work by Frédéric Nogray, I stumbled upon my review in Vital Weekly 952, of ‘Merua’, also released by Unfathomless, which used field recordings he made in 2012 in Honduras. Then I read the cover of ‘Ondureñas‘ and see it also uses field recordings from Honduras in the same year, but now at Punta Izopo’s mangrove forest and the Pico Bonito rainforest. Oddly enough the cover also lists “added material is made of feedback, electronic, and acoustic sine waves from crystal singing bowls”. Odd because I thought that most of the releases on Unfathomless deal exclusively with field recordings and very little with anything else. Maybe other composers don’t mention sources like this, or maybe they just add a bit of editing and processing. There are two pieces here in which the insects from the rainforest play a very big role but along with that there is the deep end rumble of bass tones and the lower end sine waves, feedback hums that Nogray adds. It makes altogether quite a radical release. It is, one could think, a release that deals with the noise end of natural sounds. Natural in the way these insects, birds and other wild life sounds, but also natural in the way Nogray plays with crystal singing bowls, letting them work the space as it were. Both of these pieces are quite dense in approach, but work on a very dynamic level; there seems to be something happening on virtually every sonic level of the music. If you play this with some considerable volume you will be overwhelmed by it; be careful because this can rip your speakers apart, I would think. This sort of nature & noise version is something that you won’t hear a lot I think and as such Nogray does something that is out of the ordinary. Having said that I also admit that the differences between both pieces don’t seem to be very big and the second is perhaps a more monolithic, heavier version of the first. It surely is quite a powerful release.
Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly