Sounding Out California [coll] – [Nexmap]

This collection, Sounding Out California, represents five pieces that were the winning entries in a competition in California put together by NEXMAP.

It begins with a piece by Hideko Kawamoto that feels very dark and haunted to me, with the sounds of doors shutting, metal wavering, and impending doom as in the flutters of a horror movie soundtrack. Although I hear cool, cold, and liquidy sounds, it’s apparently inspired by a poetic representation of a desert landscape. What do you hear?

Kevin Shea Adams works with static, blips, and buzzing sounds, with some melodic interludes in conversation with the crackling and popping.

Damon Waitkus’s track takes me out into the woods or perhaps a zoo at night empty of people, but full of menacing sounds from the shadows. Birds? Mammals? Demons? It’s hard to say, but they beckon.

Cheryl E. Leonard’s piece rings, splashes, and builds into concentric circles of a scraping concrete boulder that rolls and rolls like a locked groove on a vinyl record. In fact, the piece was created using “amplified stones and water.”

The final piece by Marielle Jakobsons (darwinsbitch) features musical strings, etc. emerging from buzz, for a pretty, twinkling and breathy (yet voice-less) finish.