Helena Gough – “Mikroklimata”
Kept stumbling across glowing reviews for this record, and during a fit of ordering field-recording related works, obtained this from Erstdist. Helena Gough is only in her early 20s and is an English expatriate living in Berlin (where the climate for abstract electronic music is much more receptive, presumably). These are electroacoustic works made primarily (exclusively?) from heavily processed and edited field recordings made by Gough over the last few years. Although this is the case, the extent to which she transforms this source material renders it unrecognizable; I don’t think I’ve ever heard another work made from field recordings abstracted to such a severe extent. There is little trace of the sources audible, or indication that they were sourced from field recordings at all really, which is refreshing because most “field recording composers”, a lot of whom I like very much, trade extensively on the associations of the sounds with the environments from which they were taken.
Gough treats her field recordings as a basic starting point but the end result somewhat resembles the work of another of my recent favorites, John Wall. Although drawing their sounds from different origins (Wall from 20th Century classical recordings and live samples of free improvisors), they both end up with a somewhat similar pallette, liberally sprinkling granular microsound glitches and prickles with infrasonic/ultrasonic frequencies at the edge of perception and speaker handling capabilities. While Wall’s work is a bit darker and tenser, more given to extended silences, Gough has a lusher, more textural approach. An interesting thing about the two composers is that Gough was a child prodigy, starting composition and violin very young, while Wall started composing at age 40 when he bought his first sampler. So despite the 35+ year age difference, they have both been composing since the early 90s, which might explain some of the parallels between their work.
I think the thing I enjoy most about Gough’s work is her sense of compositional scope – she has such a great sense of pacing, where to place a sound or texture for maximum effect. So much of this type of music needs to be approached with the attitude that one needs to make an effort to maintain concentration on the piece to pull out the considerable enjoyment offered, but “Mikroklimata” is cinematic and gripping without pandering or giving in to the tendency towards excessive grand gestures. This would be just about a perfect introduction to anyone interested in modern electroacoustic composition in my opinion, and it’s already approaching the status of a modern classic in this genre, just a few months after release.
Helena Gough’s website is here.
Erstdist has “Mikroklimata” available. It’s a bit hard to find on this side of the pond.
