Every second of this short running CD is abundant with meticulously hand-graded sounds and precisely measured pauses that demands highly concentrated listening and rewards with ear-opening revelations of sonic correspondences between contrasting sound elements. The opening piece “Att fälla grova träd är förknippat med risker” (in english: to fell trees is attended with risks) imposes the idea of a falling tree, that can be imagined in various sonic incarnations, only the sound of the falling tree itself is never heard raising a tense and likewise ironic atmosphere of aural hide-and-seek. Hanna Hartman received the german Karl-Sczuka-Price for radio art 2006 for this work, but the other pieces on this CD are as intense and impressive as the first. Stripped bare of the unnecessary, Hannas highly concentrated compositional style focuses on the inner qualities of known daily live sound objects, the metaphorical sense attached to most of the used sounds is dissolved in favour of a pure listening experience of a peculiar and unprecedented sound world.
I’m Andreas Bick. I compose and I work with sound. This is my acoustic notebook. You can find my thoughts about books and CDs I like and some sound recordings I did on the way. (I also practise my english writing skills here, so excuses for the mistakes I make...) Silent listening is about the fringes of music, the periphery where music turns into sheer sound - concrete, wild, sometimes stunningly beautiful.
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