Dalot & Sound Awakener: Departures
Fluid Audio

Hotel Neon: All is Memory
Fluid Audio

These recent releases from Fluid Audio not only reflect the breadth of the label's output but the territorial range encompassed by artists associated with ambient soundscaping. The respective projects by Dalot & Sound Awakener and Hotel Neon have a small number of properties in common, but for the most part they're differentiated by contrast.

On Departures, the second joint release between Dalot (Greek sound artist Maria Papadomanolaki) and Sound Awakener (Vietnamese composer Nhung Nguyen), issues relating to migration, relocation, and impermanence are explored, with particular attention given to the plight of refugees seeking safe haven and desperate for some semblance of home. As a result, the project takes on a charged sociopolitical dimension that turns it into something considerably more than an exercise in sound design and atmospheric evocation. While specific events aren't referenced, the material nevertheless invites reflection upon the daunting conditions confronting some of our planet's most vulnerable and destitute citizens. Implicit in the collaboration are pleas for empathy and compassion as well as an appeal to our common humanity as solutions are devised to deal with such crises.

For forty-eight minutes, the recording acts as a travelogue of sorts, moving as it does from place to place and locations intimated by field recordings. The muffled clatter of a train at the outset immediately conveys a sense of movement, with myriad natural and electronic elements converging into a dense, mutating mass. The brooding set-piece “Nighttime, long paths” conjures the image of figures crossing borders under cover of darkness, the unsettled mood perhaps referencing their fear of capture. Nocturnal sounds intermingle with shuffling noises, distorted voices, and glistening electronics to impart an air of mystery. Elsewhere a dizzying swirl of urban sounds hints at the disorientation experienced by migrants walking through new cities. Scenes shift from the sensory overload of industrial zones to the relative stillness of countrysides where nature sounds emerge. Electronics, siren-like synthesizers, field recordings, and acoustic instrument fragments blend into ever-evolving soundscapes, and texture is paramount as Dalot and Sound Awakener show themselves to be fastidious sculptors of sound.

However troubling the image a title such as “Segregation Lines, a drowning” evokes, Departures offsets darker episodes with moments of uplift, the bright piano playing in “Interlude” one example. More critically, the concept Nguen and Papadomanolaki operated from in creating the recording does much to bring clarity and illumination to its eleven parts. In the absence of that context, the listener would experience the album as a rich, well-crafted exercise in sound design and collage; awareness of the conceptual foundation the collaborators adopted makes the recording resonate in a deeper way.

By comparison, Hotel Neon's All is Memory shifts the focus from real-world political issues to a pure form of inner experience in keeping with the Tennessee Williams' quote from which the title derives: “Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?” Said focus dovetails seamlessly with the style of music the Philadelphia-based trio of Andrew Tasselmyer, Michael Tasselmyer, and Steven Kemner has been crafting since the project's 2013 formation: deeply textured and atmospheric soundscaping that, by the group's own admission, overlaps with the kind favoured by fellow aeronauts Hammock and Stars of the Lid. Recorded over several days at a remote West Virginia cabin in Februrary 2020, the forty-five-minute set was mastered by another kindred spirit, Rafael Anton Irisarri, at his Black Knoll Studio.

The eight pieces on All is Memory are multi-layered mini-vortexes that engulf the listener. Of course human experience is evanescent, and so too are these ambient settings; they arrest time too, however, in allowing revisitation, unlike a concert presentation. To that end, one has the luxury of returning to Hotel Neon's sweeping vistas whenever inclination arises to immerse oneself all over again. Doing so allows one to better notice details as they emerge, such that the blending of acoustic and electronic elements can be disentangled if one desires. At times processed piano, crystalline guitar shadings, or shimmering strings rise to the surface; in other places the layers indissolubly merge into a resonant mass, the material ebbing and flowing in a manner consistent with a title like “Toward a Distant Shore.” Evidence of field recordings surfaces in isolated spots, with sounds of waves crashing ashore during “Tidal” a conspicuous example.

Moments of peace and serenity emanate from these oft-soothing constructions in a way that amplifies their nostalgic dimension all the more; there's a blurry quality to the sound, too, that's consistent with the hazy character of memory and its tendency to remake the past. For optimal impact, All is Memory should, naturally, be experienced at high volume to maximize absorption. While very different in concept and style, it and Departures are both rewarding releases that, par for the Fluid Audio norm, are available in multiple formats, including, most enticingly, elaborate physical editions replete with supplementary items. Whereas All is Memory augments its two CDs with photos, prints, and an incense stick, Departures couples its CD with a book, prints, photos, and other bits.

January 2021