Lago

Sound installation | LP | 2016

Two compositions of anecdotal music created in dialogue with Ron Jude for the photobook Lago published as LP by Shelter Press.

The materials for the compositions are drawn from sites in and around the Salton Sea in the Sonoran Desert. Field recordings, contact microphones, and hydrophones were used to gather sounds from various locations, flora, desert refuse, architectural ruins, and the Salton Sea itself to create an expanded study of the acoustic ecology of the Sonoran Desert. The materials were later processed and reworked with analogue tape to reveal hidden sounds and patterns within initial materials. The compositions weave site-specific recordings together with interviews to construct an eerie acoustic portrait of the desert that is steeped in intimations of narrative.

“The work is released as a digital download as part of the photobook Lago by Ron Jude on MACK Books UK and as a physical LP release by Shelter Press based in France. These recordings fall somewhere between fact and fiction, between documentary journalism and imagined aural environments. Given so much information about their source, they cannot but seem grounded in a specific place and time, yet they still retain a vital edge of mystery that renders them deeper, more potent and more ambiguous than a piece of reportage could achieve’" Ian Melaney. The Wire Magazine UK. Jan. 2016