Artificial Memory Trace – “Boto [Encantando]” – [Ini.itu]

The back of the sleeve contains a caveat that learning about the context of the recording will “influence the way you are experiencing the sounds,” and assures that “no comprehension whatsoever is required to access this work.” This struck me as a healthy attitude, so I listened through these two sidelong pieces once without doing any research. What I heard was a collage of nature sounds (animals and water mostly) with subtle electroacoustic manipulations in some places, ever so slightly sinister: sounds that seem organic at first, then start to sound a little ‘off.’ You think you’re canoeing in the jungle only to discover you are in fact imprisoned within a very cunning terrarium. Side B is slightly ‘busier’ and more dissonant than Side A. Two artists that sprang to mind were Nurse With Wound and Hobo Sonn. Then the context, using a mirror to decode the backwards liner notes (as it turned out, backwards in reference to the convention of mirrors being carried by Mermaids): it’s a project by Czech-born sound artist Slavek Kwi consisting of field recordings originally captured on and around the Amazon River in Brazil, mostly at night, above and below water, sometimes manipulated and sometimes “as is.” Among the animals heard are bats, catfish, frogs, humans and our protagonist, the Boto, or Amazon River Dolphin. Local legend has it they are really shapeshifters (Encantados), who can transform into humanoid men (blowhole concealed beneath a hat) and father children with human women. Direct eye contact with an Encantado is said to cause “nightmares for life.” This record seems to be both a celebration of the universal Merperson myth surrounding aquatic mammals and an exploration of the myth’s sociocultural link to the modern near-obliteration of many such species. Dedicated to the Yangtze River Dolphin, the Boto‘s already-extinct relative, this is an ambient, nuanced experience that mostly succeeds in replicating the slightly eerie spiritual peace that can come from complete immersion in nature. As a child I used to regularly visit ‘Chuckles,’ the Boto who lived almost his entire life in a tiny tank at the Pittsburgh Zoo. I did make eye contact…