“In Four Tales, sound and architecture unite in a conversation that expands senses and entangles our rhythms with all other pulses that surround us. A city aware of itself. In the album, floating between documentation and imagined drifts, urban infrastructures and bodies of water are explored as entangled entities to be carefully tended to. Rooted in listening as an act of care, the album takes four distinct approaches to water-based sound journeys: three solo tracks and a collaborative one. In Four Tales Matilde Meireles expands on the work she composed as part of DRIFT, a collaborative project centred on a modular, site-specific floating pavilion and public space in Belfast. DRIFT was commissioned by Belfast City Council as part of the Belfast 2024 cultural programme. It brought together two local architecture studios (OGU and MMAS) with sound artist Matilde Meireles. The project was conceived as a “floating instrument”, an open-ended public space that fosters new perspectives on city-river connections. By creating opportunities for stillness and attentive listening, it opened dialogues between people and place. Its surface, draped in cotton ropes of varying blue shades, gently demarcated the boundary between interior and exterior. The structure, built from reusable aluminium scaffolding, floated at two sites, Stranmillis Weir and Belfast City Centre, throughout August and September 2024
While the floating pavilion was inherently community-driven — creating spaces for new connections and shared plural experiences — Four Tales translates this communal ethos into sonic form, maintaining a fluidity that extends beyond human narratives. It suggests sound and extended forms of listening as ways of forming community not only among people, but within the broader ecological network of which we are part. Four Tales is also a personal project, entailing eight years of living in Belfast and spending a vast amount of time with the River Lagan. In tale One, field recordings trace the water’s dynamic movement in its many forms across different times and geographies: the gentle flows of the River Lagan in Belfast, the River Avon in Wiltshire, the River Tejo in Lisbon and the River Tambre in Spain; the calm sea in Greece; a storm in Mozambique’s capital; and the crisp, icy surfaces following snowfall in Wiltshire. These sounds reflect water’s permeant presence intricately woven with the granular textures of DRIFT’s cotton rope and scaffolding structure as they respond to the River Lagan’s shifting patterns. Recorded and composed by Matilde Meireles, the track stems from the headphone-based installation Movements of Water Between Atmosphere, Land and Sea, experienced by visitors of DRIFT during the pavilion’s public activation programme. Two combines the site-specific exploratory works made for two mooring points on the River Lagan, creating a continuous experience that moves from one location to the other. The journey evolves from the subtle, faint life beneath the River Lagan’s surface and the rhythmic patterns of movements of water, through atmospheric phenomena, electromagnetic interference and vibrations from metal structures lining the river. The micro and macro movements in the landscape are set alongside richer underwater ecosystems and imagined animal calls, as well as tonal and rhythmic pulses deeply rooted in the original recorded materials. Recorded and composed by Matilde Meireles, this track reimagines the listening sessions Matilde created for DRIFT as a sonic journey between two locations along the River Lagan: Stranmillis Weir and Belfast City Centre. In tale Three, Meireles compiles raw biodiversity recordings collected around Stranmillis Weir into a looping, exploratory narrative that examines the rich yet incomplete nature of field recording. The recordings include animal calls, animal movements and the occasional sound distortion. A narrator catalogues both recorded species and those present but absent from the sound files — exploring the gaps between actual presence and what technology can document in a fleeting period of time. Composed by Matilde Meireles with recordings by Wild Belfast, this is a result of the collaborative and exploratory approach to cross-disciplinary mapping, where DRIFT’s team worked with Belfast-based conservation advocacy group Wild Belfast to document biodiversity around the pavilion. Wild Belfast used a Wildlife Acoustics Song Meter to map the species heard within a 500-metre radius of DRIFT across a 4-day period. Play the Space was originally performed live at DRIFT on the 15th of September 2024, by Conor McAuley (percussion), Matilde Meireles (field recordings and electronics), Michael Speers (percussion), and Paul Stapleton (tromba marina and amplified objects). The performance combined solo and collective improvisation, with attention paid to the acoustic properties of the space and the surrounding environment. Four is an excerpt taken from the live performance, mixed by Michael Speers from Oisín Hughes’s live recording. The concert was curated by Moving on Music. The accompanying Riso print poster was created by Rachel O’Grady (OGU Architects) in collaboration with Matilde Meireles. A site plan is drawn at the level of the river’s surface (where visitors to DRIFT were located), encompassing the limits of the recordings made by Wild Belfast (a 500-meter radius). This base drawing then became a vehicle for O’Grady and Meireles to discuss the differences between their practises when designing in and for public space. Creating this print highlighted a necessary divergence in their perception of the temporality of the space created, and the resultant differences in their planning of the way that each visitor might experience the work in that space and time. The use of text: descriptions of the recorded sounds written by Meireles, allows the sounds to be present in the image without appearing static, sequential or tied to a point in space. Rather, the words appear clustered and incomplete, a snapshot of a moment unfolding, partially incoherent”. (Crónica)

“Most of the music I make nowadays is commissioned for film, dance, or other projects. And I love it — it’s the best job in the world! — but sometimes I have to pull myself away from it, and make something purely for myself. My 2004 release Omval was one of these works, as is now Spelonk. These projects are always made in short bursts; once I start creating, things fall into place quickly, as if the ideas were (unknowingly) already there and just needed to get out of my system. The three tracks that comprise Spelonk (simply titled I, II, III) are built with “hardware jams” that I recorded with my live setup. It’s all quite hands-on, with effects pedals, an oscillator, and electronic gadgets. The magic happens when combining different recordings, layering them, and hearing what happens. Listening is always a favorite moment in the process, with a welcome element of surprise. I guess it’s all about creating alien landscapes — alien also to me too — that  are exciting to explore. I hesitate to say much more about these tracks as colouring the listener’s experience would be an unwelcome distraction. Eyes closed… enjoy the ride. (Rutger Zuydervelt)

Vom Label heißt es: “Myers is well known for his focus on feedback principles in music creation. It is true that this can result in shrieks of cacophony and siren wails, but not necessarily, as seen here. Delays and other processors are force-fed their own outputs via matrix mixers, samples are captured and looped randomly, and joined by various other electronic elements to create soft beds of abstract sound.” David Lee Myers lebt als Klang- und Medienkünstler in New York City. Mehr als sechzig Veröffentlichungen unter seinem eigenen Namen oder als Arcane Device liegen vor, dazu zahlreiche Kooperationen, unter anderem mit Gen Ken Montgomery, Merzbow, Toshimaru Nakamura, Asmus Tietchens und Dirk Serries. “Terrenus” ist bereits sein viertes Album auf Crónica und erscheint als CD sowie zum Download.

Der Titel “Horizons of Suspended Zones” bezieht sich auf ein Buch von Hakim Bey, dessen Idee temporärer, nicht einholbarer Räume sich hier in klanglicher Form wiederfindet. Dazu und weiterführend heißt es beim Label: “At the end of the 1990s, Hakim Bey wrote a book about the then-emerging possibility of the virtual. With the lucidity for which he is known, he recognized at the time that the virtual was nothing more than a new avenue for the expansion of capitalism. He introduced the concept of temporary autonomous zones as a kind of Foucauldian heterotopia — spaces that existed only for as long as they could evade capture. Today’s reality reflects a radical intensification of what Bey was referring to in the 1990s. Temporalities have changed completely. We are now almost overwhelmed by an incessant pursuit of instantaneity, accompanied by the mounting impatience it inevitably breeds. The temporalities of sound, therefore, are naturally different too. Time must be disobeyed. The sounds of our autonomous zones aim to be the opposite of what technology offers us today: fascination and dazzle through excess — more buttons, more effects, louder… AI. These are bare sounds, defiantly rejecting the paraphernalia that surrounds them. They are simple yet perhaps carry the greatest complexity of all: turning their backs on spectacle and presenting themselves as they are: unmasked”. Das Artwork basiert auf Bildern von Rui Manuel Vieira, der ebenfalls als volles Mitglied der Gruppe gilt.

Im Zentrum steht dabei weniger rhythmische Virtuosität als das feine Ausloten von Frequenzverhalten und räumlicher Tiefe. Vom Label heißt es: “The Nord Drum 2 has six channels, and in most scenarios, even one single channel gives a lot of sound to dive into the changing tempo’s routine. Besides that, this time Belorukov was concentrating on reverberation algorithms applied to the synthesiser’s sound. Creating artificial spaces made a huge impact on music and even a small addition of reverberation deeply transforms the sound. Adjusting parameters is an endless process, and he tried to simplify it to keep the idea of making music on the spot without overthinking. No edits or additional recordings were made. After the recording, some equalisation and compression were used to complete each piece.” Das Album erscheint als CD und zum Download.

Auch hier bleibt sein Umgang mit akustischem Material von besonderer Sorgfalt geprägt, wobei elektronische Verarbeitung nicht als Verfremdung, sondern als Erweiterung und Neuausrichtung genutzt wird. Für “Closing Our Eyes” setzt Petit eine vielseitige Kombination aus präpariertem Klavier, Daxophon, analogen Synthies, elektrischem Psalterium und Perkussion ein. Das Album erscheint als CD und zum Download.

“Kleine Geluiden”, dessen Titel auf deutsch “Kleine Geräusche” bedeutet, verbindet organische und mechanische Klangquellen zu einer dichten, detailreichen Struktur. Manche Stücke erinnern mit prasselnden, elektrifizierten Klängen an experimentelle ASMR-Techniken, andere vermitteln die physische Präsenz der ursprünglichen Installationen. Die Aufnahmen wirken dabei nicht dokumentarisch, sondern als offene Erzählungen, die die Vorstellungskraft der Hörerinnen und Hörer herausfordern. “Ich hoffe, dieses Album wird wie ein Buch sein, das einlädt, sich die Konstruktionen und Räume vorzustellen und neue Geschichten zu erfinden”, so Kunrad. Mit seiner minimalistischen, oft flüsternden Ästhetik fordert Kunrad zur aktiven Auseinandersetzung mit Klang auf: “Ein Mensch, der flüstert, ist besser zu verstehen als einer, der schreit”. In diesem Sinne ist “Kleine Geluiden” nicht nur eine Sammlung akustischer Eindrücke, sondern ein Raum für neue Wahrnehmungen und Deutungen.

Dadurch entstehen wiederum neue Klänge aus den Geräten, die mit verschiedenen Mikrofonen und Techniken verstärkt werden”. Der Titel stammt aus Dirk Raaijmakers The Art of Reading Machines als Begriff für Massenproduktionsprozesse. Ferner heißt es: “Die über die Geräte abgespielten Aufnahmen sind daher Aufnahmen anderer Geräte, die in früheren Versionen von Channelling verwendet wurden, in denen die verwendeten Klänge scheinbar banale Klangphänomene waren, die im Alltag unvorhersehbar und unregelmäßig auftreten, wie vorbeifahrender Verkehr, Wind, schließende Türen. Jetzt verursachen die Geräusche von Geräten, die nicht richtig funktionieren und ihre Programmierung abbrechen, weitere Aktionen und Störungen”. Das Material  wurde bereits bei zahlreichen internationalen Festivals und Veranstaltungen präsentiert. Das Album ist auch zum Download erhältlich. 

participatory project initiated by Matilde as part of her PhD research. The project prompted her to engage with parts of the city she probably would not otherwise get to know. The project also allowed her to start conversations about wandering in a post-conflict city, and the importance of attending to what is around us through critical listening methodologies. Loop. And Again. revisits and reinvents field recordings of the boxes mapped for X Marks the Spot. The album honours these ordinary objects that are part of the invisible fabric of the city by inviting us to listen to their materiality in great detail. Through this attentive shift in perspective and scale, Matilde invites us to extend what we perceive as sonic vibrations in the urban environment”. Weitere Informationen finden sich auf Bandcamo, wo das Album – auch zum Download – erhältlich ist.

various ways: from the check-in luggage, with electromagnetic sensors, from the onboard entertainment system, or just straight with normal mics. Voice recordings from in-flight announcements have been processed until machinic chimeras appear – the ultimate disembodied voice. By fragmenting such recordings down into individual syllables and recompiling them into new, sometimes unintelligible fantasy sequences of various interconnected and orchestrated voices, phantom words and sentences can be heard. As the Clould cycle is based on an English language understanding, a libretto-style transcription of the final 5th Movement reveals English words and onomatopoetic exclamations. This dedicated system very loosely refers to the concept of bījamantra (or bījāks. ara: seed syllable) used in Tantric Hinduism and Buddhist Mysticism, in which certain syllables, like “om. ” for example, contain sonic essences that make manifestations of a certain element, entity, or deity”. Das Album ist auch zum Download erhältlich.