Juhani Silvola: Post-Biological Wildlife
Eighth Nerve Audio

On previously issued material, Juhani Silvola demonstrated his talents as an acoustic and electric guitarist, and in performing with artists such as Splashgirl, Frode Haltli, and Jessica Sligter he showed himself to be a valuable collaborator. Post-Biological Wildlife is decidedly not, however, a guitar-focused album, and neither is it an ensemble-oriented affair. Instead, it's a bold foray into electro-acoustic production, a key detail being that the album's pieces were produced for a graduate degree at the Norwegian Academy of Music where Silvola studied with composer Natasha Barrett. It's hardly coincidental that the material on Post-Biological Wildlife inhabits a realm not wholly separate from Barrett's own.

Mastered by Helge Sten, the recording's six pieces were created entirely by Silvola, with violinist Sarah-Jane Summers providing source material for him to work with on one track, “Vaster Than Empires.” As its title suggests, the album's thematic dimension has to do with questioning humanity's role in a world increasingly centered on technology, Silvola being careful to explore the theme in nonjudgemental terms by neither glorifying nor condemning the way things are and where they're seemingly headed. To distill such ideas into sonic form, he drew from multiple traditions, among them noise, minimalism, and contemporary chamber music.

The project begins on a playful note with “Ritualrytmikk,” a classic electro-acoustic exploration featuring seven minutes of whooshes, skittering percussion patterns, burbling electronics, and whiplash cracks. Here and elsewhere, Silvola's focus is on sound assembly and in dealing with source elements, regardless of origin, in terms of sonic efficacy and how effectively they contribute to a whole.

“Machines of Loving Grace” initially aligns itself to the noise genre with a series of metallic screeches and convulsions before venturing into other territories, microsound among them. During the almost fourteen-minute presentation, delicate electronic tendrils penetrate into minimal drone foundations as softly sputtering synthesizers pan within the stereo field, the summative activity cumulating in a return to noise-related squeals at track's end. The closing piece, “Speculative Phonography pt.1,” revisits the tone and character of “Machines of Loving Grace” but dials down the intensity level and approaches the compositional design as more of an industrial soundscape collage than noise exercise per se.

“Vaster Than Empires” sees Silvola transforming Summers' fiddle and Hardanger fiddle sounds into a nightmarish dronescape out of which individual phrases extricate themselves and dramatically arc. While the string instruments are often identifiable as such, they also often suggest what the groan of a ship might sound like were microphones placed next to its heaving frame. Pitched as a “‘forged' field recording from the digital future,” the title track evokes the soundtrack of a wildlife sanctuary so convincingly it's impossible to tell whether the noises produced by birds and creatures were derived from field recordings or artificially generated.

Only time will tell whether Post-Biological Wildlife represents a permanent shift into electro-acoustic practice or is simply a one-off created to satisfy degree requirements. Regardless, the album's certainly a compelling and imaginative foray into electro-acoustic production that's never less than fully engaging.

March 2019