2 tracks – CD – 27:54
Track list:
1. Tetsuro Yasunaga 1:25
2. Jana Winderen 26:29
Live performance at Super Deluxe, Tokyo, 24th October 2008. Source material recorded with 2 x 8011 DPA hydrophones, 2 x DolphinEAR/PRO hydrophones and 2 x 4060 DPA microphones on a Sound Devices 744T recorder in Greenland, Iceland and Norway.
Reviews:
Music blog (web):
There’s been a trend in recent years to sentimentalize nature and smooth out her rough edges to make her into something people can use as a relaxation tool. Walk into even drug stores these days and you’re liable to find some sort of CD listening booth advertising titles offering you relief from stress through the soothing sounds of the natural world. You can buy anything from the sounds of a forest coming awake in the morning to the restful sounds of a gentle tide breaking on the beach.
Those relaxation recordings have as little to do with the natural world as a sitcom has to do with the human world. Just like real people don’t act anything like what we see on the television, nature isn’t the collection of soothing sounds that they make her out to be. We only need to listen to the reality of the element, water, they make the most use of for these CDs to understand how far removed from reality they really are. Thankfully, there now exist people fascinated by the real sounds of nature who are willing to go to great lengths to capture them on tape and create recordings that remind us that this force can create a tsunami as easily as a gentle breeze on a summer’s day.
Norwegian sound artist Jana Winderen creates soundscapes from recordings that she has made with specially designed microphones of rivers in China, far beneath the surface of the North Sea, and crevices that run into the hearts of icebergs. Touch Music has now released her first full length solo CD, Heated, a record of a performance she gave in October 2008 in Tokyo. According to the credits on the disc the source material used for this show was gathered with various types of hydrophones and microphones in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. Believe me when I tell you, listening to this disc is unlike anything you’re likely to have experienced ever before.
For those of you expecting to hear something along the lines of the delicate sounds of raindrops plopping onto leafs, you’ll be sorely disappointed. This is a world of mysterious groans, squeaks, and loud unearthly growls, as Winderen’s microphones pull sounds from depths beneath the ice pack in the frozen north. For twenty-six plus minutes she plays back sounds that are so alien to our ears that they could be from another planet. Of course when you think about it they are, for when was the last time you went for a walk either inside a glacier or in the depths of the North Sea?
After, what is to a non Japanese speaking audience a meaningless introduction by Tetsuro Yasunaga, Winderen’s recordings begin and we are immediately plunged into a world populated by noises that few of us could have ever imagined existed. The initial reaction is to try and find your bearings by searching for some sort of identifiable sound that you can hold onto – something we can use to get our bearings with. The trouble is that each time we might think something sounds familiar, the lapping of waves for instance, it changes and we are left floating without any idea of where we are or which way we are pointed.
You really have two options when listening to this type of creation: keep trying to latch onto something that will give you an idea as to what it is you’re listening to or surrender to the experience of being immersed in the unfamiliar. While the mind will occasionally, almost involuntarily, offer an image to go with something it hears based on previous knowledge, these pictures are as misleading as they are wrong. There’s no way that squeaking noise could be the sound of a creaking floorboard or a door’s hinges in desperate need of oiling no matter how hard your brain tries to convince you otherwise.
It’s no wonder though that you might think that, for what we are hearing evokes the same sort of reactions as those you would have wandering in any place where you feel in constant danger. I don’t think it’s because the noises are what you’d call threatening, but it’s just a natural reaction to hearing the unfamiliar. It’s a lot like being early man seated in front of caves as dark falls listening to the sounds that come alive in the night and not knowing which could spell death or which is harmless. Deprived of our ability to see, and not recognizing anything of what we hear, panic on an instinctual level is understandable.
However, if you can overcome any panic you might experience, and accept that nothing you hear is necessarily what you think it is you can begin to appreciate what you’re listening to. First of all you’ll notice it’s not just a randomly amassed collection of sounds as Winderen seems to have established some sort of arrangement. If I were to guess, and I’ve nothing to base this assumption on, it feels like we are being taken on a journey from the surface to the depths and back again. When you descend under the sea pressure increases as the density of the water builds and over the course of the performance the density of the sound gradually increases until it reaches a peak followed by a decrease that would indicate a return to shallower waters.
Of course I’ve no way of knowing if that was her intent, or whether I was just supposing something in an attempt to make the alien recognizable. What I am sure of is that I’ve never experienced anything like the journey Winderen takes us on in Heated before. While I’ve always understood on an intellectual level that nature is random and wild, this recording allows you to experience that on an emotional level. Like a wild thunder storm, this is beautiful and frightening at the same time. Not the most pleasant or relaxing of experiences, but a very real one that reminds us how little we still know of the world around us. [Richard Marcus]
tinymixtapes (USA):
Operating mainly in the realm of sound installation since the early ’90s, Norwegian artist Jana Winderen has been recently busy obtaining what she calls “blind field recordings,” essentially the recovery and documentation of sounds from unseen sources. More specifically, she has come to utilize the capabilities of the hydrophone in order to expose previously submerged sounds roaring through the depths of rivers, oceans, and glacier crevasses. On October 24, 2008, Winderen presented the material captured during various field research trips in the form of a layered improvisational performance at the Super Deluxe venue in Tokyo. The subsequent recording, Heated: Live in Japan, is Winderen’s first CD release and establishes her position in the already impressive roster of Touch artists.
Although the use of environmental sound as a compositional element is now acceptable by current musical standards, there still may be a certain level of apprehension surrounding Winderen’s methods. For example, some may view field recordings as a valuable form of documentation; others may claim field recordings fail to produce a purely aural and emotional experience. In order to be effective in this latter sense, field recordings need to be heavily processed, presented alongside a visual medium, or provide textural qualities for more traditional instrumentation. What’s particularly striking about Heated is its ability to challenge these criticisms. While the information surrounding Heated’s creation is intriguing and adds to its overall appreciation, there is still a peculiar quality recovered through Winderen’s techniques that results in an immersive and involving piece of music, even when experienced independently from its textual information.
An obvious (and perhaps hasty) comparison of Winderen’s work on Heated can be drawn to the works of predominant natural sound recordist and labelmate Chris Watson. In fact, Watson even explored similar source material when he featured a recording of a glacier in the Norwegian Sea on his excellent 2003 release Weather Report. However, while Watson’s recordings generally lean towards the subtle and serene, Winderen’s are far more confrontational. Indeed, there is an underlying sense of danger and unpredictability running through these recordings that virtually disregards any sense of relaxation that may be associated with the sounds of nature. As a result, Heated has much more in common with the work of dark-ambient artists such as fellow Norwegianers Svarte Greiner and Deathprod: an impressive feat for an artist working entirely with field recordings.
Heated opens with a brief spoken-word introduction by Tetsuro Yasunaga. Although this piece may have little meaning for those of us not fluent in Japanese, Yasunaga’s words still carry a sense of familiarity, and the piece’s human qualities serve as a powerful contrast after the listener is transported to the cavernous, otherworldly environment brought to the surface by Winderen. Expectedly, there are still sounds throughout these recordings that overtly signify the source material: the sound of water can be heard alternating between gentle trickling and crashing waves, while wind rushes violently through the cracking ice. But the sounds that dominate the atmosphere are indeed difficult to place, such as the swelling lo-mid frequencies, and the distant reverberations that seem to mimic the howls of a human voice.
Taken together, these elements make Heated a challenging listen that is well suited to its brief 26-minute duration. Being exposed to the intensity of these sounds for any longer would surely prove exhausting. Nonetheless, Winderen has succeeded in producing a work with a powerful impact even when removed from external associative qualities, further demonstrating the potential for the field recording as an effective form of musical expression. [Stephen Bezan]
Allmusic.com (US):
Heated: Live in Japan was recorded at Super Deluxe in Tokyo on October 24, 2008, and released a mere three months later, in Touch’s Tone series. This 26-minute EP, Jana Winderen’s first CD release, was rushed out to say the least, probably as a teaser for her full-length Touch debut slated for later in 2009. The performance features her strange underwater field recordings: low rumbles that evoke fog horns captured at 20,000 leagues under the sea, the sound of water being displaced, and the crackling of glacier ice. The piece begins in the open with human interventions, the crashing of waves and approach of a storm, then dives deep into regions that are still little known to mankind; you resurface a few minutes later, still surrounded by an agitated sea and strong winds. Heated’s strength relies on Winderen’s talent at painting the forces of nature into disquieting and slightly menacing soundscapes. The whole thing is over too quickly and will have you yearning for more. The delicate manipulation of sound sources evokes Francisco López, while the sense of drama puts this album closer to the works of Biosphere and Hazard (BJNilsen). [François Couture]
Boomkat (UK):
This live set, recorded at Tokyo’s Super Deluxe venue in October of last year, is the first long-form release from field recordist Jana Winderen. The music here is assembled from various auditory documents gathered from research trips, all treated as improvisational material, and morphed into elaborate sound collages. It’s very unusual to hear such meticulous and beautifully detailed environmental recordings developed into creative electroacoustic compositions – you’d normally only hear this kind of revelatory sound matter on a Chris Watson record, presented as naturalistically and as faithfully as possible, but Winderen is far less reverent of her material, shaping it into new sonic environments, rendered with an evocative sense of ‘betweenness’, as if straddling a divide between the realm of imaginary auditory topographies and more recognisable, tangible locations. Highly recommended.
White Line (UK):
Yet another artist who has escaped my radar is Jana Winderen, the latest arrival onto the Touch roster, and a worthy contender for their Tone series of works. Winderen assumes the mantle of a kind of sub-aquatic Chris Watson, deploying a pair of Dolphin EAR/PRO hydrophones, and 4060 DPA microphones to manifest a swirling, heady aquascape, sourced from beneath the oceans surrounding Norway, Greenland and Iceland. Touch’s unwritten, yet unrelenting fascination with presenting predominantly Scandinavian based artists of late is continued here with Winderen, whose work is now starting to appear in gallery installations and presentations around Europe.
In slight contrast to Watson, Winderen’s work is part source recording, part electro-drone, touching on darkly ambient territory, yet with precisely wrought inclusions and organic inflections, adding gritty texture and pin-sharp points of interest to an otherwise murky and reverberant soundscape, that in the main conjurs up the feel of an icy ocean, occupied with various creaks and grindings, the sound of liquid oozing and dripping, beating at the shorelines, and the incessant rumbling of dissonant oceanic ebbs and flows. This is a soundscape that equally demands some kind of visual element, although for those with enough imagination, Heated provides enough sensory stimulus for us to imagine the conditions and emotions engendered at the source of the sounds, as the listener is placed firmly at the focal point of all of the sonic activity captured by the artist. Business as usual for Touch, with another fine release, and another fine artist. Highly recommended. [BGN]
blogcritics.org (USA):
There’s been a trend in recent years to sentimentalize nature and smooth out her rough edges to make her into something people can use as a relaxation tool. Walk into even drug stores these days and you’re liable to find some sort of CD listening booth advertising titles offering you relief from stress through the soothing sounds of the natural world. You can buy anything from the sounds of a forest coming awake in the morning to the restful sounds of a gentle tide breaking on the beach.
Those relaxation recordings have as little to do with the natural world as a sitcom has to do with the human world. Just like real people don’t act anything like what we see on the television, nature isn’t the collection of soothing sounds that they make her out to be. We only need to listen to the reality of the element, water, they make the most use of for these CDs to understand how far removed from reality they really are. Thankfully, there now exist people fascinated by the real sounds of nature who are willing to go to great lengths to capture them on tape and create recordings that remind us that this force can create a tsunami as easily as a gentle breeze on a summer’s day.
Norwegian sound artist Jana Winderen creates soundscapes from recordings that she has made with specially designed microphones of rivers in China, far beneath the surface of the North Sea, and crevices that run into the hearts of icebergs. Touch Music has now released her first full length solo CD, Heated, a record of a performance she gave in October 2008 in Tokyo. According to the credits on the disc the source material used for this show was gathered with various types of hydrophones and microphones in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. Believe me when I tell you, listening to this disc is unlike anything you’re likely to have experienced ever before.
For those of you expecting to hear something along the lines of the delicate sounds of raindrops plopping onto leafs, you’ll be sorely disappointed. This is a world of mysterious groans, squeaks, and loud unearthly growls, as Winderen’s microphones pull sounds from depths beneath the ice pack in the frozen north. For twenty-six plus minutes she plays back sounds that are so alien to our ears that they could be from another planet. Of course when you think about it they are, for when was the last time you went for a walk either inside a glacier or in the depths of the North Sea?
After, what is to a non Japanese speaking audience a meaningless introduction by Tetsuro Yasunaga, Winderen’s recordings begin and we are immediately plunged into a world populated by noises that few of us could have ever imagined existed. The initial reaction is to try and find your bearings by searching for some sort of identifiable sound that you can hold onto – something we can use to get our bearings with. The trouble is that each time we might think something sounds familiar, the lapping of waves for instance, it changes and we are left floating without any idea of where we are or which way we are pointed.
You really have two options when listening to this type of creation: keep trying to latch onto something that will give you an idea as to what it is you’re listening to or surrender to the experience of being immersed in the unfamiliar. While the mind will occasionally, almost involuntarily, offer an image to go with something it hears based on previous knowledge, these pictures are as misleading as they are wrong. There’s no way that squeaking noise could be the sound of a creaking floorboard or a door’s hinges in desperate need of oiling no matter how hard your brain tries to convince you otherwise.
It’s no wonder though that you might think that, for what we are hearing evokes the same sort of reactions as those you would have wandering in any place where you feel in constant danger. I don’t think it’s because the noises are what you’d call threatening, but it’s just a natural reaction to hearing the unfamiliar. It’s a lot like being early man seated in front of caves as dark falls listening to the sounds that come alive in the night and not knowing which could spell death or which is harmless. Deprived of our ability to see, and not recognizing anything of what we hear, panic on an instinctual level is understandable.
However, if you can overcome any panic you might experience, and accept that nothing you hear is necessarily what you think it is you can begin to appreciate what you’re listening to. First of all you’ll notice it’s not just a randomly amassed collection of sounds as Winderen seems to have established some sort of arrangement. If I were to guess, and I’ve nothing to base this assumption on, it feels like we are being taken on a journey from the surface to the depths and back again. When you descend under the sea pressure increases as the density of the water builds and over the course of the performance the density of the sound gradually increases until it reaches a peak followed by a decrease that would indicate a return to shallower waters.
Of course I’ve no way of knowing if that was her intent, or whether I was just supposing something in an attempt to make the alien recognizable. What I am sure of is that I’ve never experienced anything like the journey Winderen takes us on in Heated before. While I’ve always understood on an intellectual level that nature is random and wild, this recording allows you to experience that on an emotional level. Like a wild thunder storm, this is beautiful and frightening at the same time. Not the most pleasant or relaxing of experiences, but a very real one that reminds us how little we still know of the world around us. [Richard Marcus]
Bergen News (Norway):
Tokafi (Germany):
Domesticated Sonic Artifacts: A cinematic opening shot and a multiangle production.
Every major movie’s got to have it: that big, cinematic opening shot which makes you feel as though you’re about to witness something incredibly impressive and intense for the next two hours. Maybe Jana Winderen should seriously consider a career in directing, for the opening section of her debut album has everything a Hollywood blockbuster would kill for: an eery, twisted harmonic sheet fades in from the dark and opens up the view to a vast, windswept plane filled with faint patterns of discreet scraping, the crystaline movement of pearly bubbles rising to the surface of a flourescent volcanic sea and haunting traces of bizarre organ tones at the outer edge of the horizon. It is almost as if she were flipping a switch: the light dies down, you close your eyes and then the projector starts to roll, colouring the canvas with wordless scenes from frosty excursions to Greenland, Iceland and her native Norway.
The sheer detailedness and intricacy of her vision points to a tedious compositional process, but in fact, “Heated” was recorded live on the occasion of the last of two Japanese gigs late last year. If only more releases from the experimental scene were dedicated to the felicitous effect of spontaneity as much as this one: the material is audibly fresh and of a momentuously contemporary quality. Comprising Testsuo Yasumaga’s brief, one-minute introduction to the concert and the ensuing one-track composition by Winderen, the album is also a concise affair, clocking in at well under half an hour – leaving listeners panting for more instead of overstuffing their bellies. Combined with the minimalism of her pallette, made up of dark, earthcoloured drones and high-resolution, close-captioned field recordings, it makes for a work which presents Winderen as an artist with a penchant for precision, purity and raw power.
The main reason for the alluring appeal of “Heated” lies in its architectural trilogy of compositional dramaturgy, documentational aspects and sound art. Foremost, Winderen is a phonographer, collecting environmental recordings as fragments of music played by the planet itself. Cutting tiny circles into thick crusts of ice to dip her Dolphin hydrophonics into the cool water, holding her microphones into the storm to catch its soul or taping herself treading narrow pathways of tiny cobblestones, her initial impulse is always to portray the private aspects of her environment and to hold her ear to the ground to listen to what it has to say.
It is only in the studio or on stage that these field recordings are either discreetly transformed or embedded into ominous textures to create non-linear, fluent tension archs. Even at this stage, however, she never tries to step into the limelight too overtly, prefering to take on catalytic functions instead and supporting sounds to carve out their own canale. One could compare her approach to a painter who sees the core of her oeuvre in getting the colours right and to use the canvas as a space to best bring out their inherent qualities rather than trying to impose her egoistic will on them.
If “Heated” sounds trickingly tangible, then this is because Winderen makes full use of the stereo image, creating a vivid aural panorama which seems to close in on its audience from all sides. The result is a succession of panoramic scenes, which are marked by silent sounds turned up to reveal their secrets on the one hand and very loud and physically threatening noises on the other, creating the impression of wideness and distance. And yet, despite its grand, cinematic opening shot and multiangle production, the album cares little for the kind of hollow special effects Hollywood uses to hide its narrative deficits.
Quite on the contrary: the longer one immerses oneself in Winderen’s world, the more agreeable it becomes. Which may explain for its title as well: by collecting souvenirs from the most barren and frosty places, she has domesticated these sonic artifacts, allowing them to radiate their inner warmth as they gradually thaw in your ears. [Tobias Fischer]
noripcord (UK):
I think there is a common intuition among many drone, ambient and minimal artists that drives them towards the sounds of nature generally. A sort of unspoken acknowledgement that, no matter what the artist’s chosen instruments or where he plans to take the music, he owes a solid chunk of what he is doing to the sounds produced by the world around him. Evidence of this is abundantly clear on even one’s first survey of the world of drone. Field recordings are hotter property than ever before, artists are reveling in more and more primitive recording techniques, and you cannot get through even the shortest blurb of a review of a drone album without encountering the word “glacial” or a reference to tectonic plates. On this second release from Norwegian “sound recordist” Jana Winderen, this sentiment is brought to it’s logical extreme, or at least one of them.
Winderen, performing here live at Super Deluxe in Tokyo, bases her performance off of a series of field recordings she had done on various research trips she has taken. I use the term field recording somewhat loosely here, because what Winderen is doing seems to demand a more exacting term. Going far beyond leaving a couple mics in the woods or on the porch during a thunderstorm, Winderen utilizes seriously cutting-edge technology to milk all the possible sound out of some remarkably curious sources. Winderen sends her various recording devices on profoundly strange pilgrimages to the most utterly alien of locales (specifically, the depths of the ocean, literal glacial caverns and the like) documenting the experience in sound, creating a sort of aural map of the space around them.
A largely superfluous and borderline frustrating spoken Japanese introduction leads us into the track itself. Once we get there, though, I do not feel that I am exaggerating when I say that these recordings might as well be from Mars or even further. The sounds that are played back for us perpetually tease with the possibility of intelligibility before suddenly morphing into something that blatantly announces itself as purely “other” to our experience. Footholds are extended and withdrawn before we even can even register them cognitively. The sounds are often complexly layered upon themselves multiple times; yawning, abysmal caverns create sound by their sheer space while what sounds like organic matter skitters around it’s edges before being snuffed out in a loud snap or crackling. Waves turn into feet in a swamp, which turn into brittle, flaking tones over the course of a few seconds. A world that is as vast and terrifyingly gaping as humanly imaginable, yet one that inextricably compresses itself down to the minimal space possible. Watching specials on deep ocean life on the Discovery Channel is certainly one thing, but something about Winderen’s audible reconstruction brings home the physicality of the space much more potently and renders it manifoldly less fathomable.
I read somewhere that we know more about the surface of Venus percentage-wise than we do about the deepest parts of our own oceans. I feel that the idea behind this release is, in that vein, one of perspective. Somehow, we are brought back to terms with our status as it relates to these expanses in our own world, that is, a relationship of total non-comprehension. However, the hope of Winderen is, I believe, to also offer us the most approximate of delineations, allowing us to at least begin a deeper process of exploration. [Gabriel Keehn]
Earlabs (Netherlands):
Jana Winderen is one of the new artists in the Touch stable, focussing on field and hydrophonic recordings. After a successful 7″ release on Autofact we are now presented a mini album: Heated: Live in Japan.
It doesn’t happen very often that a new artist is added to the Touch stable without having any proper album out. So when I got this cd in from Jana Winderen it was quite a surprise to me to see that it is released by Touch. Of course I already had her 7″ out on Autofact, which by the way is a really fine one, but still…
Though, after some research it came clear to me that she has done many projects for installations, festivals and more already, including works with Chris Watson, which makes this all less strange. The connection lies there.
Her first release on Touch is Heated: Live in Japan which was recorded October 24th in last year at Super Deluxe, Tokyo.
Jana Winderen does research to hidden sounds from the depths of our oceans. For this she travels mainly to the Greenland, Iceland but she also records closer to home: Norway.
For Heated she mixes and reworks these recordings to show us what a strange and unknown world it is below the water surface. Of course the reference of Chris Watson is not far from her work, but she seems to manipulate the recordings some more, giving everything her own twist.
With my headphones on and my eyes closed it sounds as if you are really in the middle of this water. It is that my headphones aren’t water resistant else I would probably listen to this while in the shower (sadly enough I have no bathtub). Not only do we hear recordings of water, but also the sounds of ships, the breaking of waves on the shore and the moving of glaciers seems to come back.
Heated: Live in Japan is a lovely documentation of sound and shows another star in the field recording business. Later this year she will release a studio album. Let’s see what this will bring us. For now I am really looking forward to it. A really deserved addition to the Touch stable.
For impressions of the live of a field recorder I recommend taking a look at the website of Jana Winderen which shows some pictures of her fieldworks to the Nordic ice seas and glaciers. 9/10 [Sietse van Erve]
Brainwashed (US):
The two pieces on Heated: Live in Japan are named after their respective performers. The opening piece is a short spoken word piece by Japanese improv musician Tetsuro Yasunaga. Not speaking Japanese, this could be either poetry or simply the artist telling someone that they have parked in the wrong place and were blocking the delivery entrance to the venue. The main piece, “Jana Winderen” sees Winderen create a stunning composition from field recordings made in Greenland, Iceland and Norway. Unlike a lot of similar artists (recording in the same general geographic areas), the sounds Winderen has captured are busy and exciting: stones being rubbed together, unusual water noises and many unidentifiable but deeply textured sounds. She puts them all together in a way that is a delight to the ears and as a result Heated ends up being a fantastic disc. The only problem with it is that the total run time is only just over 25 minutes, I would be happy for it to last much, much longer.
Quiet Noise (Germany):
Die norwegische Klangkünstlerin Jana Winderen ist schon seit längerem als Kuratorin und Produzentin tätig, mit einer 7″ auf Autofact und vorliegender CD auf Touch legt sie nun ihre ersten Solo-Releases vor. »Heated« ist ein knapp halbstündiger Mitschnitt einer im Oktober 2008 in Tokyo abgehaltenen Performance, in dem in Grönland, Island und Norwegen aufgenommene Sounds zu einem dicht texturierten Mischgewebe aus Wasser, Wind und Wildlife verwoben werden.
Vor allem das Wasser steht hier im Vordergrund, sowohl Unterwasser- wie auch konventionelle Mikrophone lassen immer wieder ungeahnte Klänge an die Oberfläche steigen. Im entstehenden, unbedingt einnehmenden Hörerlebnis, kommt das scheinbar Vertraute immer sehr nahe neben dem Ungehörten zu liegen. Das Rauschen der Tiefe könnte auch der Wind oder die Brandung sein, elektrostatisches Knistern genauso gut fallender Schnee. Über oder unter dem Meeresspiegel? Und was hat plötzlich die knarzende Schiffsplanke hier zu suchen? Der Weg vom Detail zur Stimmung ist da zumeist nicht weit, und die ist durchwegs fantastisch.
»Heated« ist jedenfalls so verwirrend wie wunderschön, die verwendeten Field Recordings von erstaunlicher Klarheit und Kraft, der großartige Live-Mix spannend und unmittelbar, extrem dicht, ohne jedoch erdrückend zu wirken. Passt naturgemäß genau auf Touch, wo Jana Winderen, according to plans, noch in diesem Jahr ein auf Hydrophonaufnahmen basierendes Studioalbum veröffentlichen wird. Außerdem arbeitet sie mit Chris Watson an einer Installation mit dem viel versprechenden Titel »Voices from the Deep«. Wird sicher wild. [Tobias Bolt]
thestranger.com (USA):
Norwegian sound artist Jana Winderen wants you to hear anew as well; equipped with submersible microphones – hydrophones – Winderen reveals the sonic beauty of the ocean. Her innocuously named EP Heated: Live in Japan (Touch) documents her improvising with a trove of recordings made in the icy waters of Greenland, Iceland, and Norway. I’m not surprised to learn that Winderen contributed hydrophone recordings to the Sigur Ròs film Heima; she shares the band’s penchant for conjuring brooding, majestic desolation.
the silent ballet (USA):
Sound artists are an odd breed. Their love of sound prompts them to record subjects as diverse as booming sands, nesting birds, and the properties of the inner ear. They are often willing to travel to extreme locales and brave uncomfortable conditions in pursuit of a short sample. Many view them as obsessive or arcane. When interviewed, some define themselves as collectors, others as cataloguers. They are not like the rest of the world, but they perform a valuable service.
Think of how many times you’ve heard and enjoyed a sound, whether natural or unnatural. Maybe the hum and clank of your heater, which sounded foreign and unfamiliar when you first moved in, but now sounds like an old friend. Or the sound of boots creaking on old wood. Or the cumulative drip of an ice storm melting. Perhaps you’ve noticed rhythms in the clack of a subway train, or the pleasing stereo effect of two cars passing when you’re driving in the center lane. You may have reflected upon these things, or even remarked on them, but have you recorded them? Probably not.
Now imagine some of the world’s lost locales and sounds. Entire glaciers have melted without ever having been recorded. Languages have disappeared. Species have vanished. Before Edison, we had no way of imagining that such things could be preserved, archived for future generations.
Enter Jana Winderen, a Norwegian adventurer fascinated with the art of natural sound. Armed with specially designed microphones and hydrophones, she traveled throughout Greenland, Iceland and Norway, lowering her sensitive instruments into rivers and crevasses, eager to capture the sound of the earth’s internal workings. But she didn’t stop there. She brought her recordings home and sculpted them into an intensely musical document – then she went on tour. Heated is an extraordinary achievement: a live album that doesn’t sound live (no audience noise is audible, only a brief Japanese introduction), a symphony without instruments, a natural sound track rather than a soundtrack.
Over twenty-six and a half minutes, a story unfolds, a narrative of form and substance.
Winderen makes sense of the world, transcribing subterranean creaks and rumbles into musical exposition, providing the listener with framework and familiarity. A two-note bass hum provides the chorus, a bridge between otherwise disparate samples. The earth tunnels and booms. Water races through cracked glaciers on its way to the sovereign sea. We encounter quiet and loud parts, a give and take not unlike that found in a typical post-rock piece. The track culminates in a collage of wind and wave and whistle. This is not just a collection of samples; this is a song.
The results bring to mind an intriguing possibility. Could shorter recordings of this variety ever be released as singles? The answer is an ear-popping yes, as those who order the Jana Winderen bundle from Touch will attest. The 45 contains two compact tracks, each ending in a locked groove, creating a possible baseline for second-generation samples. “Drift” continues in the Heated vein, blending underwater hydrophone recordings from five different countries, while “Mae Taeng” samples frogs, crickets, catfish and shrimp from the paddy fields and rivers of Thailand. I highly recommend the bundle purchase, as these recordings are themselves valuable artifacts and provide a fuller sense of Winderen’s capabilities. The sonics on “Mae Taeng” are particularly crisp; this may be the best shrimp piece you’ll ever hear.
They may be odd, they may be rare, and they may have to work other jobs in order to support their passion, but sound artists remind us that music is all around us: in the skies, in the rivers and underneath the earth. When we forget this, we lose part of life’s essential beauty, and so we can be grateful for artists such as Winderen who share their glorious obsessions with the world. [Richard Allen]
Allmusic.com (USA):
Heated: Live in Japan was recorded at Super Deluxe in Tokyo on October 24, 2008, and released a mere three months later, in Touch’s Tone series. This 26-minute EP, Jana Winderen’s first CD release, was rushed out to say the least, probably as a teaser for her full-length Touch debut slated for later in 2009. The performance features her strange underwater field recordings: low rumbles that evoke fog horns captured at 20,000 leagues under the sea, the sound of water being displaced, and the crackling of glacier ice. The piece begins in the open with human interventions, the crashing of waves and approach of a storm, then dives deep into regions that are still little known to mankind; you resurface a few minutes later, still surrounded by an agitated sea and strong winds. Heated’s strength relies on Winderen’s talent at painting the forces of nature into disquieting and slightly menacing soundscapes. The whole thing is over too quickly and will have you yearning for more. The delicate manipulation of sound sources evokes Francisco López, while the sense of drama puts this album closer to the works of Biosphere and Hazard (BJNilsen).
de:bug (Germany):
Bergen News (Norway):
Bagatellen (USA):
Many inventions have reflected an atavistic need to aid man in his destruction of the planet, which have then developed benign, civilian applications: Radar, Nuclear Power, perhaps even Jerry Springer. And this is certainly true of a beloved device of professional field recorders everywhere: The Hydrophone.
First used in the First World War as a way of detecting the sonar of German U-boats underwater, it is now in the creative hands of Norwegian Jana Winderen, who is probably best known for her collaborative work with English field recording alumnus Chris Watson, on the touch release Holystone.
Teasing out the arcane mysteries of the sea would bedevil even hardened oceanographers this side of pioneer Walter Munk. But with Winderen’s syncretised background in fine art and the natural sciences, she is exquisitely placed to channel through this most sensitive of acoustic technologies.
To emphasize this universalist point: recordings from Greenland, Iceland and Norway make up this live set which was performed as part of the ‘Norwegian Music Today Festival’ last year at the Tokyo Deluxe. Yasunaga Tetsuro’s spoken word introduction almost acts as an analogous incantation to the Shinto god of the sea, Susanoo, and what transpires thereafter is a creeping cavernous sound mass, percolating with deep sea wave polyphonies, gaseous bubble orchestras, and tectonic percussion: a sub-aquatic equivalent of one of Ligeti’s blocks of sound.
But what makes this a remarkable listen is not just the fact that we are confronted with sounds that directly relate to the sea. Some sources in the best acousmatic tradition are unclassifiable to the spectrogram of human deep listening, in fact, it is Winderen’s refusal to make just simple field recording work, but in her words, “to collect sounds which are not instantly recognisable, but give room for broader, more imaginative listening”.
The conscious orchestration of the piece is admirable in its representation of nature in all of it harsh anamorphism. Sounds of cracked fissures and granulated stone are heightened by limited and tasteful intervention of the multichannel mixing desk. But nothing in nature is permanent, as Winderen, attuned to the formation and decay of natural processes, implicitly understands.
Jana Winderen may have failed to record the creation of new mythological gods and transcendent Oceanids, but she deftly lifts the lid on a relatively unexplored new sound world, which precludes anticipation for a full debut release later in the year. [Paul Baran]
Dark Entries (Belgium):
Als men zoiets ongebruikelijks als Jana Winderen’s debuut in de bus krijgt, dan is men benieuwd wat de collega’s van de internationale pers daarvan vinden. Blijkt dat nogal wat van die collega’s struikelen over die anderhalve minuut durende intro in het japans… Welnu, beste muggenzifters, seuten en sukkels: hiervoor staat er een SKIP-knop op elke stereo-installatie…
Het tweede nummer van deze ‘Heated’ omvat de rest van de CD en ik moet zeggen dat die in staat is om uw standpunt ten opzichte van muziek en geluid in het algemeen voorgoed te veranderen. Zware woorden die wat meer uitleg vragen…
Jana Winderen is een noorse geluidsartieste die zich af en toe onledig houdt met het opnemen van geluiden op plaatsen waar geen ander mens op zou komen. In het geval van ‘Heated’ is dat bijvoorbeeld het geluid van in de noordelijke ijszeeën parende kabeljouw, in aziatische rivieren zwemmende garnaal en krakende en knisperende gletsjers en ijsbergen. Dit is voor Jana slechts de basis van een bijna half uur durende soundtrack die een bijna onmerkbare afwisseling en subtiel samenspel kent tussen veldopnamen en zelf toegevoegde geluiden. Het effect zit hem niet in het herkenbare, maar juist in feit dat we de geluiden absoluut niet kunnen herkennen, hoezeer we ook moeite doen. Wie van ons kan zeggen dat ie geluiden herkent die enkel ettelijke meters onder de zeespiegel te horen zijn? Mevrouw Winderen is er geweest en is bereid ons deze ervaring op haar manier aan te reiken… Deze hele soundtrack is gemixed voor een live-publiek, dus vergeet de eventuele uren-dagen-weken in de studio. Een ware heksentoer!!
Dit alles scherpt niet alleen ons gehoor maar tevens onze nieuwsgierigheid naar Jana Winderen en wat haar motieven zijn om zo’n bevreemdende en tegelijk ongemeen boeiende klanktapijten te weven. Ik ruik een aankomend interview alsof het de eerste paasbloem betreft…! [Jan Denolet]
Rockerilla (Italy):
Titel (Germany):
Jana Winderens Spezialität sind Töne, die unter Wasser entstehen. Mit aufwendigem Equipment begibt sie sich unter die Oberfläche, und man darf sich wundern, was sie von dort alles zutage fördert: Rauschen, Gurgeln, Grollen, Blitzen, Scheppern, Rasseln – das Meer hat offensichtlich eine Unmenge an Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten. Dabei beschränkt sich Winderen keineswegs auf romantischen Naturalismus, sondern weiß auch die Unwägbarkeiten des nassen Elements entsprechend aufs Band zu bannen. Es entstehen sogenannte ‘hydrophone’ Aufnahmen, welch wunderbares Wort.
Auch für Sigur Rós’ Film “Heima” hat Winderen schon Aufnahmen aus isländischen Gewässern beigesteuert. Dies hier ist die Aufzeichnung eines Konzertes, das Winderen am 24. Oktober 2008 in Japan gab. Wirklich einziges Manko dieser bemerkenswerten Platte ist ihre kurze Dauer – nach einer halben Stunde ist leider alles vorbei, und man hätte doch so gerne noch weiter zugehört im Rausch der Tiefe. Ideale Kopfhörermusik zum sprichwörtlichen ‘Eintauchen’ und Erfassen des individuellen Pegelstandes. [Tina Manske]
Blow Up (Italy):
VITAL (Netherlands):
Following Nana April Jun in last week’s Vital Weekly, Touch offers another release by someone we never heard of. Jana Winderen only released a 7″ so far on Auotfact, although she worked with Hauswolff’s Freq_out and saw her field recordings used by Sigur Ros on their film ‘Heima’. ‘Heated’ is a live recording made at Super Deluxe in Tokyo on 24th October 2008, containing field recordings made in Greenland, Iceland and Norway. Details of the equipment used are on the cover, and is perhaps of interest for specialists only, but it includes Hydrophones to record the world below the sea waves. I assume she uses various CDs with various field recordings, [no she doesn’t! – ed.] which she combines in an improvised way to create a piece of music, which in this case lasts twenty-six minutes (and on a separate track a spoken into by one Tetsuro Yasunaga). I must say the field recordings are absolute great. No doubt about that. Also the composition as such is very good. But what bothers me a bit is that this doesn’t seem to stand out from much else that is done in this field. This could have been on And/Oar for instance or Alluvial. With a label like Touch one would assume an extra component, a conceptual angle or something like that, but its not the case. A great, gorgeous work no doubt, and certainly someone to look out for in the future. [FdW]
D-Side (France):
Dark Entries (Belgium):
Als men zoiets ongebruikelijks als Jana Winderen’s debuut in de bus krijgt, dan is men benieuwd wat de collega’s van de internationale pers daarvan vinden. Blijkt dat nogal wat van die collega’s struikelen over die anderhalve minuut durende intro in het japans… Welnu, beste muggenzifters, seuten en sukkels: hiervoor staat er een SKIP-knop op elke stereo-installatie…
Het tweede nummer van deze ‘Heated’ omvat de rest van de CD en ik moet zeggen dat die in staat is om uw standpunt ten opzichte van muziek en geluid in het algemeen voorgoed te veranderen. Zware woorden die wat meer uitleg vragen…
Jana Winderen is een noorse geluidsartieste die zich af en toe onledig houdt met het opnemen van geluiden op plaatsen waar geen ander mens op zou komen. In het geval van ‘Heated’ is dat bijvoorbeeld het geluid van in de noordelijke ijszeeën parende kabeljouw, in aziatische rivieren zwemmende garnaal en krakende en knisperende gletsjers en ijsbergen. Dit is voor Jana slechts de basis van een bijna half uur durende soundtrack die een bijna onmerkbare afwisseling en subtiel samenspel kent tussen veldopnamen en zelf toegevoegde geluiden. Het effect zit hem niet in het herkenbare, maar juist in feit dat we de geluiden absoluut niet kunnen herkennen, hoezeer we ook moeite doen. Wie van ons kan zeggen dat ie geluiden herkent die enkel ettelijke meters onder de zeespiegel te horen zijn? Mevrouw Winderen is er geweest en is bereid ons deze ervaring op haar manier aan te reiken… Deze hele soundtrack is gemixed voor een live-publiek, dus vergeet de eventuele uren-dagen-weken in de studio. Een ware heksentoer!!
Dit alles scherpt niet alleen ons gehoor maar tevens onze nieuwsgierigheid naar Jana Winderen en wat haar motieven zijn om zo’n bevreemdende en tegelijk ongemeen boeiende klanktapijten te weven. Ik ruik een aankomend interview alsof het de eerste paasbloem betreft…! [JD]
Musicreaction (France):
Jana Winderen : Nature Concrète
Quand il élaborait son Traité des objets musicaux, Pierre Schaeffer ne s’imaginait certainement pas que des aventuriers de la musique concrète ajouteraient à ceux-ci 30 ans plus tard, le bruissement des embruns, les explosives de la lave en fusion, le chant des mammifères marins ou le frottement du vent dans les feuilles de palmes. Ces sons naturels, sont pourtant bien quotidiens eux aussi, et même quand nous ne sommes pas là, nous en sommes aujourd’hui certains, l’arbre qui s’abat dans la forêt fait du bruit lui aussi. C’est en partant de ce principe qu’est née l’école du Field Recording dont fait indéniablement partie la Norvégienne Jana Winderen.
Jana Winderen est une aventurière. Elle parcourt la planète, magnéto en main, pour capturer les sons de notre mère nature. Volcans, falaises escarpées, fonds des océans (grâce à son hydrophone !), rien ne lui fait peur! On ne peut qu’admirer cette inlassable archiviste des sons qui prend des risques pour rendre son art vivant. Sur Heated, son dernier album lui aussi “capturé” live au Japon, elle présente sa version des sons de la nature: inquiétants, écrasants, vibrants, grondants Les pièces de Jana Winderen sont si riches en matière d’acoustique, si pleines de sons “inouïs”, comme aurait dit Schaeffer, qu’elles sont également profondément déstabilisantes. On se dit parfois qu’une vie ne suffirait pas pour faire le tour d’un seul de ses disques.
Gomag (Spain):
GMD (France):
Bon nombre d’entre vous ont certainement dû remarquer à quel point les disques de relaxation en tous genres pullulent dans les rayons des grandes surfaces. Qu’ils mettent en avant des gazouillis de criquets dans les hautes herbes provençales, des évocations de cérémonies indiennes ou encore le ruissellement continu d’une rivière en haute altitude, ces disques faisant l’éloge de la zen attitude ont définitivement la cote. Cette technique commerciale visant à promettre à la ménagère anxieuse un bien-être à la carte n’en finit pas de vendre, comme un contrepied à cette fatalité d’époque qu’est le stress quotidien.
Pour d’autres la reproduction de sons environnementaux a bien vite pris une dimension tout autre. Qu’ils soient musicologues, scientifiques ou simplement musiciens, ces chasseurs de sons ont élevé au rang d’art la capture sonore naturelle. Il n’en fallait pas plus pour que naisse le « field recording », genre musical se consacrant entièrement à l’analyse des sons environnementaux. Une fois embrigadé sur bande magnétique, le son subira différents traitements en fonction de l’objectif voulu : pur document descriptif ou véritable entreprise musicale, auquel cas le matériel sonore brut se verra retravaillé, élagué jusqu’à en devenir quelque chose de personnel. Jana Winderen est de cette caste-là. Mais la Norvégienne ne s’arrête pas là, elle pousse encore plus loin l’art de la sédimentation sonore en se plongeant dans l’obscurité des fonds marins pour y trouver la matière première de son expérimentation.
Armée jusqu’aux dents d’hydrophones (des microphones waterproof si vous préférez), la belle retransmet au cours d’une prestation live le microcosme marin qu’elle étudie depuis de longues années. Température de l’eau, profondeur des différents micros, localisation géographique, autant d’éléments qui agissent sur la nature du son et qui font l’objet d’une attention toute particulière au moment de mettre ça en « musique ». Une bien belle expérience à déconseiller aux claustrophobes car, une fois mise en marche, l’auditeur se voit accroché par le cou à une gueuze ayant pour unique direction le fond des océans. Et à des dizaines de mètres sous l’eau, il ne fait pas bon vivre, croyez-moi : la noirceur absolue à des kilomètres à la ronde, l’impression d’être seul et observé de tous sans pouvoir prendre pleinement contact avec la matière. Une ambient massive qui prend parfois le temps de remonter à la surface afin d’écouter le chant rauque d’une pluie tombant sur la mer glaciale, comme pour mieux replonger au c¦ur de l’enfer marin.
En réalité, ce qui différencie ces tentatives expérimentales des vulgaires disques de relaxation cités plus haut, c’est le rapport étroit entretenu avec la matière sonore : crue et authentique, la captation ne pose aucun écran entre le micro et les phénomènes naturels, augmentant ainsi la consistance du traitement pour obtenir finalement une musique ambient angoissante à vous faire pleurer un marin. Pas de voile déformant, ni de détournement de son, ici l’expérience est vivante et intense. Un disque à vivre absolument. 7/10 [Simon]
Octopus (France):
Artiste sonore de la profondeur, que ce soit celle des océans ou celles des crevasses glacières, la Norvégienne Jana Winderen ouvre un chapitre Touch qui s’annonce consistant – un album studio est prévu pour cette année – avec ce Heated, un enregistrement live réalisé au Japon en 2008. Réalisé aux moyens d’outils technologiques scientifiques de précision – Jana Winderen a récemment participé à une expédition de topographie sonore dans la Mer de Barents -, sa musique offre une lecture lumineuse surprenante pour des sources de field recordings (les prises son ont été effectuées en Islande, au Groenland et en Norvège) autant enfouies dans leurs dimensions physiques extrêmes à l’origine. Ondoiements liquides et ondes de choc plus telluriques se télescopent avec une finesse d’approche qui rend l’ensemble étonnement disert et expressif, dans la plus grande tradition des propositions imagées d’un Chris Watson (avec lequel elle collabore d’ailleurs sur l’installation Voices From The Bleep) par exemple. [Laurent Catala]
Etherreal(France):
On n’avait jamais entendu parler de Jana Winderen avant la sortie de cet album, alors que celle-ci travaille dans le domaine de l’art depuis 1993. La Norvégienne était jusque là principalement investie en tant qu’organisatrice, curatrice, productrice et initiatrice de projets artistiques internationaux. D’un point de vue production sonore, ses travaux ont surtout servi à des installations, des projets live comme Freq_Out aux côtés de Jakob Kirkegaard et BJNilsen notamment, et plus récemment les fans de Sigur Ros ont peut-être entendu quelques uns de ses enregistrements en regardant leur film Heima. Du côté discographique, uniquement un 7″ chez Autofact, le reste étant en MP3 dont son Utvær disponible gratuitement sur TouchRadio. Vous l’aurez peut-être deviné, Jana Winderen travaille dans le domaine du field recording, mais avec une spécialité plutôt originale : l’enregistrement hydrophonique!
Après une courte piste d’introduction sur laquelle on entend Tetsuro Yasunaga (membre de Minamo) présenter le travail de la Norvégienne, le concert d’une petite demi-heure peut commencer. Les sources sonores proviennent de quatre hydrophones plongés au large du Groenland, de l’Islande et de la Norvège, mais aussi de deux microphones. Le reste, c’est le travail de l’artiste : collage, mise en parallèle, confrontation bref, composition sonore nous donnant à entendre l’inaudible, ramenant à la surface des sonorités enfouies.
Si l’on devait mettre des mots sur ces sons, ce serait drone, souffle métallique, eau qui coule, frétillements de brindilles, frottements de galets, crépitement du feu, clapotis, et comme une lente respiration, grave, provenant des entrailles de la Terre, et terminant un premier mouvement. La deuxième partie nous apparaîtra plus aérienne avec le vent dans les feuillages, grincements de la coque d’un bateau, des vagues qui s’écrasent, petits cliquetis minéraux, et cette sourde respiration, mystérieuse, qui revient pour clôturer le deuxième mouvement. La dernière partie sonne comme un adieu, un éloignement marqué par un vent glacial, les vagues qui viennent s’échouer sur la plage et quelques oiseaux qui piaillent.
Il s’agit là d’une simple énumération de ce que l’on entend, de ce que ces sonorités nous évoquent, mais le tout fait l’objet d’une véritable composition, d’un enchaînement fluide créant une magnifique pièce ambient, un véritable paysage sonore.
A noter pour les amateurs du genre, que ce premier album chez Touch aura une suite, cette fois pour un véritable album studio que l’on devinera assez proche de ce live puisque reprenant le même procédé créatif (hydrophone, Groënland). Courant 2009 également, Jana collaborera logiquement avec Chris Watson puisqu’ils travailleront ensemble sur une installation intitulée Voices from the Deep.
Artiste à suivre donc! 6/8 [Fabrice Allard]
Liability (France):
L’océan a toujours été source d’inspiration pour bon nombre d’adepte d’une musique électronique expérimentale et ambiante. Jana Winderen, qui a fait parti de Spire, Freq_Out et Field, a été happé, elle aussi, par l’appel du large. Enfin, c’est ce que la musique qui est entendue sur Heated laisse deviner. Après une courte introduction de Tetsuro Yasunaga (Minamo), Jana Winderen développe du field recordings fantomatique et dont la lenteur fait penser à ces grands navires qui se frayent lentement un chemin à travers les glaces Arctiques et perçant un épais brouillard ou alors à ces sous -marins massifs qui se déplacent avec une assurance inquiétante. Cette pièce d’un peu plus de 26 minutes a été improvisé lors d’un live au Super Deluxe de Tokyo en 2008. Usant d’hydrophones et de sons environnementaux enregistrés successivement au Groenland, en Islande et en Norvège, fait passer l’océan pour ce qu’il est en surface. En effet, il ne serait qu’une immensité désertique autour duquel des éléments climatiques hostiles et froids viennent se positionner. Heated n’est pas un album aussi organique que ce que l’on aurait pu croire. Bien au contraire, il développe cette idée que les fonds marins et ce qui peut les entourer (en surface ou non) ne sont que mystères et peuplé de composants complexes aux contours difficilement saisissables.
Sans être opaque pour autant, Heated n’est pas un album fait pour rassurer ni même pour amener la moindre sérénité. Clairement ce disque est une exploration en milieu hostile montrant que si la nature peut être belle elle peut également se révéler dangereuse. Les enchainements sonores de la Norvégienne installent irrémédiablement l’auditeur dans cet état d’esprit. Les effets sont assez saisissants et on se prête aisément au jeu. Cependant on reste un peu sur notre fin car Heated n’est qu’une courte présentation des capacités de reproductions sonores de Jana Winderen. Présenté comme un album, il ne dépasse pas la demi-heure mais a cet avantage d’ouvrir une porte sur les expérimentations encore mal connues de son auteur malgré son implication dans les arts modernes. Ceci dit nous n’aurons pas à attendre longtemps puisque Touch a déjà prévu de sortir un nouvel album pour cette année 2009 toujours basé sur ce travail autour d’hydrophones. [Fabien]
Ruis (Belgium):
Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden):
tinymixtapes (USA):
Operating mainly in the realm of sound installation since the early ’90s, Norwegian artist Jana Winderen has been recently busy obtaining what she calls “blind field recordings,” essentially the recovery and documentation of sounds from unseen sources. More specifically, she has come to utilize the capabilities of the hydrophone in order to expose previously submerged sounds roaring through the depths of rivers, oceans, and glacier crevasses. On October 24, 2008, Winderen presented the material captured during various field research trips in the form of a layered improvisational performance at the Super Deluxe venue in Tokyo. The subsequent recording, Heated: Live in Japan, is Winderen’s first CD release and establishes her position in the already impressive roster of Touch artists.
Although the use of environmental sound as a compositional element is now acceptable by current musical standards, there still may be a certain level of apprehension surrounding Winderen’s methods. For example, some may view field recordings as a valuable form of documentation; others may claim field recordings fail to produce a purely aural and emotional experience. In order to be effective in this latter sense, field recordings need to be heavily processed, presented alongside a visual medium, or provide textural qualities for more traditional instrumentation. What’s particularly striking about Heated is its ability to challenge these criticisms. While the information surrounding Heated’s creation is intriguing and adds to its overall appreciation, there is still a peculiar quality recovered through Winderen’s techniques that results in an immersive and involving piece of music, even when experienced independently from its textual information.
An obvious (and perhaps hasty) comparison of Winderen’s work on Heated can be drawn to the works of predominant natural sound recordist and labelmate Chris Watson. In fact, Watson even explored similar source material when he featured a recording of a glacier in the Norwegian Sea on his excellent 2003 release Weather Report. However, while Watson’s recordings generally lean towards the subtle and serene, Winderen’s are far more confrontational. Indeed, there is an underlying sense of danger and unpredictability running through these recordings that virtually disregards any sense of relaxation that may be associated with the sounds of nature. As a result, Heated has much more in common with the work of dark-ambient artists such as fellow Norwegianers Svarte Greiner and Deathprod: an impressive feat for an artist working entirely with field recordings.
Heated opens with a brief spoken-word introduction by Tetsuro Yasunaga. Although this piece may have little meaning for those of us not fluent in Japanese, Yasunaga’s words still carry a sense of familiarity, and the piece’s human qualities serve as a powerful contrast after the listener is transported to the cavernous, otherworldly environment brought to the surface by Winderen. Expectedly, there are still sounds throughout these recordings that overtly signify the source material: the sound of water can be heard alternating between gentle trickling and crashing waves, while wind rushes violently through the cracking ice. But the sounds that dominate the atmosphere are indeed difficult to place, such as the swelling lo-mid frequencies, and the distant reverberations that seem to mimic the howls of a human voice.
Taken together, these elements make Heated a challenging listen that is well suited to its brief 26-minute duration. Being exposed to the intensity of these sounds for any longer would surely prove exhausting. Nonetheless, Winderen has succeeded in producing a work with a powerful impact even when removed from external associative qualities, further demonstrating the potential for the field recording as an effective form of musical expression. [Stephen Bezan]
Nordische Musik (Germany):
Das Verborgene und Fremdartige hörbar machen: So könnte man Jana Winderens musikalisches Programm beschreiben. Die Umsetzung ihrer Ideen betreibt sie mit dem Neuesten, was die Aufnahmetechnik zu bieten hat – taucht sie doch ihre Mikrofone in die Tiefen des Ozeans und ins Knackende, nur scheinbar stille Innere isländischer Gletscher. Und doch ist sie keine reine Klangquellenforscherin – wie diese Live-CD aus Japan zeigt. Denn in der Konzertsituation mischt Jana Winderen ihre vorgefundenen, aus der Tiefe ans Licht geförderten Klangfundstücke zu einem dramaturgisch durchgeplanten Ganzen.
Das jedoch bleibt, wie sollte es anders sein, immer fremdartig und auf dunkle Weise faszinierend. Die Klänge aus der Tiefe sind dröhnend und kalt, sie könnten ebenso aus der Tiefe von Klangerzeugungssoftware und Soundgeneratoren stammen – wenn da nicht diese Aura von blinder Stärke und Naturgewalt wäre, die das Wummern, Rauschen, Pochen und Wabern von Wasser- und Eismassen umgibt. Nur eine halbe Stunde (mehr als lang genug) dauert diese Reise in die Tiefe. Spätestens dann muss man auch wieder emporkommen und nach Luft schnappen. Denn auf Dauer ist es zu kalt und finster da unten. (sep)
ae mag (Germany):
Jana Winderen beweist laut Ausführungen des beiliegenden Promotextes hohes Geschick im Abnehmen submariner Klänge und Gletschergeräuschen. Der vorliegende kurzweilige Mitschnitt eines ihrer Konzerte ähnelt dennoch stark der Vorführung der rollenden, schmatzenden und leisen Töne ihrer bevorzugten Klanggebiete als einem Livekonzert mit dekonstruktiver Bearbeitung des Quellmaterials.
Ähnlich einem DJ mischt Winderen Aufnahme über Aufnahme übereinander, gleicht die Frequenz an und setzt leise Fades zwischen den jeweiligen Bestandteilen. Der ebbende Fluss droniger Delayfrequenzen mag da noch via DSP umgesetzt worden sein, der Rest wirkt wie der bereinigte Wahnnehmungsklang eines Menschen, der seinen Kopf in eiskaltes Gletscherwasser steckt und dabei das Wasserrauschen der endlosen Unterwasserweiten ins Ohr gebrüllt bekommt. Der Effekt gleicht dabei durchaus dem einer recht großen Stereoweite, ähnlich dem Wassertropfen in der Regentonne, akustisch betrachtet.
Jana Winderen greift dabei so kristallin in die reiche Klangfauna der sonst verborgenen Orte ein, als hätte sie die Aufnahmen nicht via Unterwassermikrophon aufgenommen sondern ein Audiomikroskop in den Fjord gehalten. Essentiell, spannend, ohne Frage. [5/5]
Adverse Effect (UK):
Using an array hydrophones, Norwegian sound-artist Winderen here collects material gathered from Greenland and Iceland as well as her native country to create a nearly 27-minute-long piece recorded live at Super Deluxe in Tokyo, October 2008. Concerning her work with the sounds to be found in lakes, oceans, glacial crevasses and generally beneath the world we see around us, she weaves together sonic blankets as haunting as they are beguiling or comforting. Mysterious underwater creaks, crackles and oozes converge with the atmospheric flowing and gushing to an effect as satisfying as that to be found on Nurse With Wound’s heavily criticised Salt Marie Celeste album. And, outside a limited edition 7″, ‘Surface Runoff’, released on USA-based Autofact label, some of her recordings appearing in Sigur Ros’ 2007 film, Heima, and a series of installations and collaborations (including a recent one with Chris Watson), Heated is actually her debut CD. I look forward to hearing more. [Richard Johnson]
Musique Machine (UK):
Drop a microphone down into a fault line, between rivers of bubbling earth and plates of ice grinding each other into snow, and you’d come up with something that sounds like Heated. Jana Winderen’s album for Touch, recorded live in Japan, was compiled from (according to the sleeve) a slew of sonorous location recordings in Greenland, Iceland and Norway.
This isn’t just an unspooling of an audio home movie, though; it’s been composed, with elements shifting and vying with each other for attention. It’s also an exercise in clashing textures—the way the squeaking and cracking of ice (at least, I think it’s ice) will lance through the groaning and churning of what I’m betting is a lava flow or a slow-motion mudslide. I’ve never experienced synaesthesia, but this record came close to evoking a feeling like that: the sounds are so rich, precisely-recorded and solid that I was divided between just listening to them and wanting to sink my teeth into them.
The album works best on headphones, but if you have a good set of speakers play it loud: you’ll be surprised at how effective and, well, transportive the album is. I was reminded of CM von Hausswolff’s “Life and Death of Pboc”, my ranking-favorite record of this ilk, which also created a space that sounded both cavernous/resonant and soothing/womblike. That and both records manage the neat trick of sounding both organic and formal: they composed it, or maybe they simply stumbled across it as it was and let it do its thing for the microphones.
The worst thing about Heated is how short it is: it clock in at a mere 26 minutes. But like another too-short Touch product before it, The Hafler Trio’s Fuck, it’s 26 minutes that add up to a lot more than many albums twice its length or more. I understand Winderen has a full-length disc coming out later this year from Touch as well. I’ll put in an extra invocation to whatever gods are listening to send a copy my way. [Serdar Yegulalp]
Ruis (Netherlands):
Hawai (Chile):
Desde aproximadamente 1993, la artista noruega Jana Winderen se ha desarrollado tanto creando como produciendo y curando trabajos artísticos, exhibiciones e instalaciones, pero no es hasta recién mediados de esta década que comienza a publicar sus sonoros, siendo el primero completamente a su nombre el 7” “Surface Runoff” (Autofact, 2008).
“Heated: Live In Japan” es el registro de una presentación en vivo, en el Super Deluxe (Tokio, Japón), presentación realizada el 28 de octubre del pasado año, y en la que empleó e improvisó sobre material grabado con micrófonos e hidrófonos en lugares como Groenlandia, Islandia y Noruega. Al norte del norte.
Lo que más claramente se puede oír a lo largo de los veintisiete minutos que dura es el agua, su desplazamiento, sea entre superficies más sólidas, o entre ella misma. Son estos sonidos naturales, así como otros, los que cubren todo el disco. De ahí su carácter acuoso y un tanto inaprensible (“Part 4”), aunque en ocasiones tiene cierto efecto ahogador (“Part 3”).
La propuesta de esta artista –o documentalista– es mostrar lo que no vemos, lo que no oímos. Hacer visible aquellos muchos otros mundos que por diversas razones no conocemos, pero que, gracias a la tecnología actual –algún buen uso tenía que tener tanto avance– podemos presenciar, en este caso su propia música. “He estado ocupada con encontrar sonidos de fuentes no vistas de sonido, como grabaciones de campos blancos. Durante los últimos dos años he estado coleccionando grabaciones hechas por hidrofonos, de ríos, riveras, playas y el océano, y más recientemente también de glaciares en Groenlandia, Islandia y Noruega. En las profundidades del océano hay invisibles pero audibles paisajes sonoros, acerca de los cuales somos muy ignorantes, aún cuando el océano cubre el 70% del planeta”. Sí, somos ignorantes, de esto y de mucho más, pero siempre habrá alguien que nos abra los ojos, en este caso los oídos –para imágenes esta “A Scene At The Sea” (Takeshi Kitano, 1991) o, un tanto más new age, “Le Grand Bleu” (Luc Besson, 1988)-. En esta ocasión se trata de Jana Winderen, quien nos traslada a los vastos terrenos del mar, y a la inmensa calma de sus movimientos ondeantes. Como decía el fotógrafo Hiroshi Sugimoto, a propósito de sus ‘Seascapes’, “cada vez que veo el mar, percibo una tranquilizante sensación de seguridad, como si visitara mi hogar ancestral”.