MYSTERY SEA 35 | Cherry
Beach Project | [silo 11]
ARTWORK
front
back
INTRODUCTORY
WORDS
-"Cherry
Beach is located at the end of a small, artificially created
peninsula on which various heavy industrial facilities and toxic no-man’s
lands decay. The area is infamous as a site out of public sight for
police to engage in ‘off the record’ activities. Our location was within
a complex of vacant waste oil storage facilities on Cherry
Beach. While recording on the night of June 5th, 2004, we were
forced to abandon our equipment after discerning that violent activities
were taking place in one of the seemingly abandoned structures nearby.
We returned at dawn to retrieve our equipment, which we were able to
do successfully, only to be pursued out of the area and down the beach
by two unidentified men. Fortunately we escaped unharmed, with our recordings
intact. Since this time the entire compound and all of its reverberant
structures have been demolished, leaving only an empty lot. The material
presented here has been selected from two days of recording on site,
but otherwise left untreated and unprocessed."
- Joda
Clément/Nigel Craig, November 2006
PRESS RELEASE
Joda Clément is
a young canadian composer of great promise, as already emphasized in
some reviews related to his debut disc for ALLUVIAL, "Movement
+ Rest"...
With an acute ear for details, Joda blends subtly ambient
sounds with processed ones stemming from analog or acoustic instruments...
Here with his friend Nigel Craig who gave the impulse
to this work by pointing out the specific used location, he pushes everything
a step further, rooting out the spirit of the place, while manipulating
objects & instruments in situ... this quasi "animist"
approach & revisitation makes us enter into another dimension, as
Joda & Nigel channel unknown & unvoiced
forces, going deep into the invisible universe...
Sometimes everything merges
to an astonishing extent
Listening to the pulse of the night,
full of silver shades,
the air is filled with threat
-
Bent in "Silo 11"
We absorb its decaying aura,
a body of strange connections,
inner engraved memories,
vague but intense feelings
letting the inky sea flow within...
-
Bringing back all what's lingering
those tranquil ghosts still singing
-
"Silo 11" is a fount of knowledge
a training locus
a ford to acumen
enabling you to circle the Instant
and catch the long gone by...
an antenna into the world of meaningful silences...
TRACKS
01. >
06. untitled
part 1
part 3
LENGTH
40'03
REVIEWS
VITAL WEEKLY 560|Frans
De Waard
From the ever so nice city of Montreal,
with no beach in sight (not that I seen at least), comes Cherry
Beach Project, which is a project of Joda Clement
and Nigel Craig. The latter we don't know, but the
first we know from his fine CD on Alluvial Recordings 'Movement +
Rest'. In the harbor of Montreal there are a few unused silos which
are used by visual artists, such as [The User] in the past, which
are subject to music here. Using the vast amount of natural reverb
of the location, the two bring music that is different than many of
the others on Mystery Sea. It's hard to tell what it is that they
do, but it seems to me they play back sounds from electronic sources
back into the space, along with perhaps acoustic objects. The sounds
seems to be flying away in space. Soft shrieks, careful strumming
of long strings and perhaps a low bass rumble here and there. Normally
I don't like the use of artificial reverb, but here it works quite
well. It reminded me of ABGS' 'Bunkerschallung' from many moons ago
and this release is a particular stand out in the Mystery Sea catalogue.
vital weekly
AQUARIUS
new arrivals #259
The latest in the Mystery Sea label's ongoing
exploration of "night-ocean drones", which as we've mentioned
in the past, is precisely what these discs sound like. Dark, moonlit
nights, rippling black seas, and drones, glorious drones!
Cherry Beach Project is the Canadian duo of
Joda Clement and Nigel Craig, and Silo
11 was indeed recorded in a silo, at Cherry Beach, an industrial
wasteland, on an abandoned peninsula in Toronto, know as a place,
where "off the record" police activities occur, and all
manner of crime. The area has since been demolished, but on the nights
of recording, the duo were forced to abandon their equipment in the
midst of some sort of violence, forced to return the next day to retrieve
their equipment, only to be pursued by several unidentified men. With
that sort of story behind the recording of Silo 11,
one might expect something more jagged, or harsh, or extreme, but
instead, the sounds here, are glistening and delicate, massive stretches
of shimmering space separating low end thrums and sparkling upper
register glimmers, each note hovering gently like dust motes caught
in moonbeams. Drops of water, send sonic ripples skyward, deep cavernous
groans and distant chimes swirl lazily in wide open fields of reverb,
huge barely audible rumbles permeate the proceedings, offering up
subtle sonic support, bumps and random percussive thumps surface occasionally
out of near silence, but just as quickly fade away. Definite nods
to Japanese field recordists Toshiya Tsunoda, as the silo is as much
a part of the action as the sounds created within it. So mysterious
and dark, spacious and abstract, minimal and haunting.
Like all Mystery Sea releases, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered,
and gorgeously packaged in striking full color artwork.
aquarius
MUSIQUE
MACHINE | Roger Batty
Rated
: 3 stars out of 5
Silo 11 is built around
slowly evolving and dissolving drones and ambience, with a distinctive
bleak mysterious air about it. Like walking along a changeless grey
landscape made up of derelict industrial units and decaying metal
structures & expecting strange figures to suddenly appear. It’s
the work of young Canadian Joda Clément composer
with help from his friend Nigel Craig. The pair merges
together creaking organic and steel soundworks, with ambient and drone
haze emitted from both analogue and digital instruments. Featuring
forty minutes of monochrome sound worlds, split into six untitled
tracks, but really it feels like one long piece. Very little happens
in the conventional musical sense, sure you have mountain and valleys
of greying sound, but more than anything this is about building an
atmosphere that you can almost see your breath in. It starts &
finishes in much the manner, just sliding barely into been & equally
just sliding out once more into barely re-settling sound air. Another
effective mix of instrumental and found sound ambience and drone craft
from the Mystery sea label. Like their other releases it's ltd to
100 copies- meaning if this sounds your cup of bleak tea, go get it
quick.
musique machine
TOKAFI
|Tobias
Fischer
Many people seem to think that experimental music
inherently implies provocation. Which, in turn, probably has to do
with the fact that the majority of listeners automatically feels intimidated
if a composition defies conventions, breaks implicit agreements or
simply disturbs rather than pleases. As this album proves, however,
there is a third way. “Silo 11” is an
experiment in every single one of its conceptual fibers, it is a journey
into unknown territory with a faint suspicion of its destination but
no prior security regarding its outcome – and yet it is
never looking for cheap thrills or silly shock effects.
In any case, don’t let yourself be put off by reading about
the background to this recording (as interesting as it might be).
After all, two guys making noise inside an empty waste oil storage
tank usually means that you’re in for a session of industrial
madness or witnessing a high-browed intellectual analysis. The first
suspicion is more easily refuted than the latter: These bodyless flageolets
and limpid rumblings on top of a continuous distant stream of deeply
pitched roarings and metal reverberations comes as quiet as a cat
in the night, stealing round corners with bated breath and relying
on the suspense of anticipation, rather than the horror of releasing
the tension. Regarding this as an academic endeavour, meanwhile, would
disregard the personal backgrounds of Nigel Craig,
the man with the idea to the “Cherry Beach Project”,
and Joda Clément, whose Alluvial recordings
debut “Movement + rest” was a summary of years of experimenting
with acoustic and electric sounds alike and of finding his own and
personal approach. Clément especially has
been working hard at finding intersections between the purely “musical”
and the “environmental” or even “common”.
The entire aim lies in getting away from ivory towers, not in erecting
new ones. Consequently, there is a fine line between “Silo
11”’s methods and its results: This is not music
for an installation, this time the music is the installation. Similar
to some of Luigi Nono’s longer works, small islands rise up
from an endless sea, offering the listener a place of rest and reconnaissance
before disappearing to the bottom of the ocean again. In between stretch
passages of emptiness, of vague allusions and bleak, but multifold
metaphors. Strangely enough, it’s not frightening at all.
Part of that has to do with the fact that the musicians have refrained
from excessive post-production. As far away from you as this place
may be, it is by no means artificial or as construed as the chambers
of “Saw”. And secondly, Craig and Clément
have allowed the outside world in – for a minute,, a helicopter
hovers the air outside, its rotors buzzing with a dull, but immediately
recognizable hum. It’s a moment with a wink, which takes out
all heaviness and adds a touch of humor. After that, you can say goodbye
to all notions of provocation and allow yourself to freely wander
the landscape of this 40-minute trip.
tokafi
TOUCHING
EXTREMES |Massimo
Ricci
Joda Clément and
Nigel Craig had a dangerous experience in Cherry
Beach, an isolated place in an artificial peninsula "on which
various heavy industrial facilities and toxic no man's lands decay".
After realizing the recordings heard here - which include nocturnal
stillness, metallic scraping, insufflations into bottles, dragged
objects and breathtakingly evocative distant airplanes - they had
to escape after becoming aware of ongoing "violent activities"
in one of the nearby structures. Even after having rescued their equipment
in the early hours of the morning, Clément
and Craig were fronted by two unknowns who expelled
them from the area. Knowing this story is important for a better appreciation
of these untreated, unprocessed sounds, which seem to represent the
voices and the whispers of hidden presences advising the two comrades
to leave the place before it's too late. The connection between the
raw harmonics of the metals and the passing planes is absolutely intriguing,
the threatening reverberant thuds heard in the fifth section letting
even the listeners at home raise their heads in alerted preoccupation.
Overall, an enigmatically fascinating piece of suburban sound art.
touching
extremes
THE
WIRE #258 - Outer Limits|Jim
Haynes
Cherry Beach is located in a lakefront region
of Toronto that had once been a heavily utilised industrial zone.
When the area was abandoned and left to a toxic fate, it also developed
an unsavoury reputation as a site for the police to intimidate homeless
and drunk denizens. Despite the warning signs, Canadian sound artists
Joda Clément and Nigel Craig
were attracted by the decayed resonance of the vacant buildings on
Cherry Beach back in 2004. Armed with branches, empty bottles, wine
glasses and whatever else was lying around, the two surreptitiously
recorded a quiet ritual of acoustic activities. Closely responding
to the natural reverb of the cavernous metal architecture, Clément
and Craig emerged with a wonderful set of
slow progressing bellows, sweeping gestures and protracted chimes.
More often than not, the Cherry Beach Project offers
a far more mysterious and evocative atmosphere than the abandoned
building strategies of the celebrated Japanese improvisor Kiyoharu
Kuwayama.
The
Wire
EARLABS|Larry
Johnson
Definitely furthering Mystery Sea's goal
of releasing “highly immersive music” and of the fascination
with the “archetypal liquid state”. Joda Clément
and Nigel Craig bring their own version of deep listening
to the label's “night-sea drones“ conceptual series by
way of their Cherry Beach Project - Silo
11 CD-R.
Anymore I hesitate before I label a release “experimental”
because it’s an adjective that has been considerably over applied
and now tends to encompass such a wide range of sounds that it no
longer carries the weight that it once did. However, in the case of
Cherry Beach Project - Silo
11 there’s enough unpredictability present in which
the outcome relies more on randomness than on a carefully laid out
path or deliberate editing that “experimental” is an appropriate
descriptor.
Using the natural reverberation properties of an empty waste oil storage
tank as the audio processing tool, various objects (branches, bottles,
wine glasses, stones, cymbal, bow, finger piano, water, voices, plastic
tubes, structural remnants, etc.) are played/manipulated within its
confines and the reflected sounds are recorded directly to digital
audio tape. It shares some similarities with Jeph Jerman’s animist
orchestra approach except for the important difference that the sounds
of the played objects don’t remain pristine because they are
unintentionally processed as a result of being affected by the intrinsic
acoustics of the storage tank itself.
Even though there are a variety of incongruent and discordant sounds
competing with one another, the six untitled tracks come across as
highly listenable with some evanescent moments of surprising concord.
Deep drones, metallic chimes, bowed tones, distorted timbres, forlorn
groans, reverberating drips, deep bass resonances, sporadic percussive
bursts, and even the real sounds of an airplane flying overhead making
for almost forty-minutes of fascinating listening.
Earlabs
GOS|Ben
Fleury-Steiner
Silo 11 by
Cherry Beach Project - fascinating, enviro-sludge--no NOT
sunnO))) or Boris--I mean real sludge the stuff of their environment
given voice through various manipulations....Joda Clément
and Nigel Craig conjure haunting, creaky--indeed,
pleasantly damaged music--that was recorded inside an empty waste
oil storage tank at the abandoned Cherry Beach facility (wherever
that is, actually I don't want to know)...It's strangely affective
stuff in the same way Sleep Researcher Facility let the old steam
radiator sing its steamy stutter on Dead Weather Machine...Only more
active than DWM as Clément and Craig
use their various wares to interact with their toxic, corroded, post-apocalyptic
setting...This is dark "ambient" music not for category
sake but for the actually oily, metallic darkness that Clément
and Craig shape and tweak into a mesmerizing language
of barren desolation...((((Indeed, apparently during the recording
session the Cherry Beach site was invaded by some crazed hooligans
who scared Clément and Craig
right off site, forcing them to leave their equipment behind [!]...)))
There is a sense of a resonant dread here for sure,
but one that evades contrivance, becoming what it must; the anthem
to a no man's land transmuted into something altogether alive and
creeping....
GOS
SONOMU|Stephen
Fruitman
--- NEW !
When I was a teenager growing up in Toronto
in the 1970s, Cherry Beach was notorious. Despite its innocuous name,
the infamous man-made spit hid some heavy and ugly industrial facilities
from the eyes of polite society. However, at night, I was told, local
cops were fond of taking homosexual men there for informal "interrogations".
Urban legend or not? I don´t know, but these rumours have persisted
and Joda Clément and Nigel Craig,
the creative duo known as the Cherry Beach Project,
repeat them (albeit without mentioning the gay angle). Apparently,
the entire compound with its "reverberant structures" (including
one Silo #11, I presume) has been torn down since the project was
completed, leaving only an empty lot - and a lot of bad energy.
The story of Silo 11´s genesis
is exciting enough to reprint verbatim: "Our location was within
a complex of vacant waste oil storage facilities on Cherry Beach.
While recording on the night of June 5th, 2004, we were forced to
abandon our equipment after discerning that violent activities were
taking place in one of the seemingly abandoned structures nearby.
We returned at dawn to retrieve our equipment, which we were able
to do successfully, only to be pursued out of the area and down the
beach by two unidentified men. Fortunately we escaped unharmed, with
our recordings intact." (Whether the source of the threat was
Toronto´s Finest remains unknown.)
Processed field recordings are nothing new, but every
well-chosen site has its own specific ambiances, resonances and, well,
personality. Furthermore, context is all: A secluded cove on Vancouver
Island is not the same as an abandoned community swimming pool in
Chernobyl. So the very recording itself can emit a benevolent, or
malevolent, energy.
The latter of which is certainly the case with Silo
11. The location was apparently suggested to Clément
(who usually works alone) by Craig, who also appears
to have been the one responsible for adding to the ambiance by moving
"artifacts found at the site" around in the space at irregular
intervals, while Clément shades or stipples
the texture of the recording with analogue technology and acoustic
materials, including tree branches, bottles, glasses, bowed cymbals,
and plastic tubes, among much other debris.
The locale makes the recording all the more forbidding,
of course, now that we know its story. Both found sounds and conscious
manipulation have made Silo 11 a very uncomfortable
place in which to spend any amount of time. No wonder they ran away.
At certain points, especially track two of the six, untitled pieces,
there is a lot "happening", as the venue seems to be discharging
all its negative energy at once. At others, much less proves to be
much more; an eerie near-silence occasionally disturbed by inexplicable
aural events is far more ominous that all that sound and fury.
A well-conceived and -realized project.
Sonomu
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