Helena Gough
Mikroklimata
CD (E91)
Four soundworks germinated with co-existence in mind.
Four points along a route of continual transformation.
Environments formed of magnified degradations and eruptions.
Single cells and clusters multiplied and mutated.
Spaces disrupted by small collapses and stark ruptures.
Mikroklimata is Helena Gough’s second solo album.
See also Helena Gough (E38)
First edition of 300 copies
£8
Discovered in studio backyard, Berlin, during
the intensive period of Mikroklimata’s creation.
Photograph by Helena Gough, January 2010
As a sculptor might bury their hands in their chosen media,
or chip away at a block until what remains stands as a physical
manifestation of what exists in their imagination, so Helena
Gough’s music is the end product of a long process of collecting
and manipulating material, kneading it, tearing it, reducing it
down, building it back up, somehow knowing when to stop and
present what is left.
Gough is a composer working in the digital realm. This, her
second album, comes nearly four years after the first, with
the intervening years spent gathering small fragments of sound
from a variety of places, which she then processed and altered
continually until finally weaving them together in an intensive
session of concentrated intuitive composition lasting just a few
months. The sounds that appear on Mikroklimata began life
as field recordings, digital and analogue synth experimentation
and recordings of acoustic improvisation sessions by George
Cremaschi and Peter Evans. The origins of the sounds are all
long gone, however, lost in the process of crunching the material
into its malleable state. If there ever was recognisable bass or
trumpet sounds in here, they lost their identifying character
some way down the line.
The four pieces that come out of the other end of this process
sound thoroughly physical. Twisting, turning knots of sound
tighten and unravel as they progress along their muscular
journey, full of rapid shifts in pace and dynamic. Gough’s sound-
world is thoroughly digital, the natural acoustic presence of the
displaced samples is replaced by a vibrant synthetic torsion as
they come back together in composition. However, despite the
computerised texture and minute detail of its constituent parts,
Mikroklimata sounds very human, its shapes and progressions
resembling an improvising saxophonist in full flight. Not unlike
the music of Gough’s contemporary John Wall, these compositions
somehow sound fluid and natural, as if played by some massed
orchestra of alien instruments rather than pieced together from
hundreds of smaller fragments. Powerful, expressive musique
concrète for the 21st century, Mikroklimata stands out from the
crowd as a work of considerable substance.
Richard Pinnell in The Wire