MYSTERY SEA 04 | ea| [öL]
ARTWORK
front
back
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
-"Schroedinger's
cat meowing in an atomic cage.
Being in two places at one.
One is quite tangible, present at the distance of sight,
the other cannot be easily located, thus establishing a genuine sonic
horizon.
One can no longer tell his inner elusive sounds from the audible surrounding.
Is it the acoustics of a space producing an echo or is it your mind
repeating what it has already learned to hear ?
Like mantra uttered selected number of times resonates endlessly loosing
its primal shape, a physical place is sipping into one's mental essence,
so that you can barely escape the impression of being into one place
only.
This sound research made by EA is aimed
at revealing a frontier between the perceived and the recalled.
It is you who must find out."
- ea, March
2002.
PRESS RELEASE
MYSTERY
SEA is proud to present what's probably the very last testimony from
polish ea sound-entomologists...
Indeed it has recently been decided to call a halt to this project,
yet 2 of the 3 members intend to go on with further explorations under
their own name ("Viön & Mem").
From their early beginnings in 1999, ea always used sounds to
instigate a profound & spatial listening experience abounding in
microsonic details...
gradually, they left their organic dronescapes for more abstract electroacoustic
forms incorporating lots of treated field recordings...
öL is kind of a perfect point
of intersection between these two inclinations, a subtle enthralling
blend...
Entering öL is fathoming a strange spiritual interzone as
a "stalker"...
essential
fluids and inward resonances combine with soft dreamy ceramic- tinkling
reverberations guiding you from start to Somewhere else...
subliminal streams brush against the surface, and at distillation, everything
seems elongated, slowed to make us reach higher ground and gain consciousness...
mirrored in, endlessly referring back to its origin, refracted and corroded,
along a delicate transformatory motion...
öL is clearly a Gate to rediscovery.
TRACKS
01
02
03
04
LENGTH
58'03
REVIEWS
VITAL
WEEKLY 343|Frans de Waard
With
their releases Mystery Sea begins to be one of the more interesting
CDR labels which focus on releasing ambient/drone music, mostly of a
darker nature.
Their fourth release is by ea, a band from Poland, who has released
various works in its homeland, but may be stop working as ea
soon - for reasons that I don't know.
Here ea devotes itself to playing prepared guitar and manipulated
field recordings. Deep, low end washes on the guitar, drenched, no doubt,
in a whole line of sound effects and the environmental recordings, of
whatever nature they are (I didn't recognize them anymore) which together
create a whole scenery of images.
The strongest was the third, untitled (as all four are) piece, in which
the guitar sounds like far away thunder storm, recorded next to sea
and the birds humming in the background.
A piece that is not unlike Jim O'Rourke circa Disengage, but ea
adds enough of his own palette to avoid the trap of a copycat.
Tense, intense ambient music.
vital
weekly
AMBIENTRANCE|David
J. Opdyke
Rated
: B+
A limited-edition (100) cd-r further explores
the subtly-noisy soundscapes forged by the enigmatic Polish artists.
Four tracks in 58 minutes consist of "manipulated field recordings
+ prepared guitar", evidenced in the opening track by fidgety activities
occurring within a mechanoid rumbledrone as faint tonal haze lingers.
industrial-strength steambath 2 (10:19) sizzles and
glares while inscrutably shifty goings-on occur within, tracing erosive
textures into the formlessness.
Thinner currents are diffracted throughout the cloudboiling murk of
the 3rd track, slowly wavering, rising, falling and
eventually thickening into a throbbing morass.
The hovering vapors of similarly-obtuse 4 (19:46) are
embedded with tinkling ceramic patterns and billowing subbass emissions
which evolve through various inexplicable transformations of muted resonance.
The liner notes intimate that this could be the last outing from Patryk
Zackrocki, Viön and Membrana,
which would be a shame for fans of such dazzlingly indistinct ear-travels.
ambientrance
INCURSION|Richard
di Santo
ea
is perhaps an individual, perhaps a trio from Poland.
There are three names listed here : Patryk Zakrocki,
Viön and Membrana.
Are these aliases or individuals ? In any case, here is the latest instalment
in Mystery Sea's growing catalogue of limited edition CDRs, and like
their previous releases this one focuses on the darker side of ambient,
deep drone music, here made with manipulated field recordings and prepared
guitar.
Four tracks, nearly sixty minutes in length, and not a ray of sunshine
to be seen.
ea takes you right through the depths, through dark caverns and
bleak industrial basements, the concrete full of cracks and falling
apart, the droning machines clouding the silence at every turn. Close,
concrete tapping, crackling, striking, rattling sounds punctuate the
foreground of otherwise shifting, deep drones and static.
The tracks evolve slowly and create strong moods and atmospheres that
engulf the listening space in compelling ways.
The notes here mention that this might be the last release from ea
(why, we'll never know), which, after diving deep into their sounds
for an hour, seems a pity.
incursion
ERP|Krzysztof
Sadza
A
farewell, as usual enigmatically entitled release from ea and
a continuation of their audio-journeys you could find on the previous
releases. Remarkably packaged CD-R on Belgium's label Mystery Sea holds
four long tracks (playing time ranging between 10 to 20 minutes ), each
of which could as well live its own life, also as a separate release.
The edition is limited to 100 copies, but I guess it is likely to be
reprinted if only they sell well.
This item is worth buying not only because it's collectable. ea
have been regarded as some of the more interesting explorers
in the microsound world. The universe where ea acted
consisted mostly of field recordings and prepared instruments, e.g.
the violin or the guitar.
But it's the ingenuity of manipulation and treatment of sound that gives
a peculiar character and feel to ea's works.
There is much of an epitaph in what I'm writing, but listening to "öL"
you feel sorry that these are the last cubic kilometers of space by
this band we can travel.
Apart from 3D effects you experience the layers of sound mounted on
one other - a shifting of huge sound blocks, falling of stardust, subsurface
booms, hums, throbs, moments of hush and noisy eruptions.
You can also play in guessing the source of the output material as some
of the sounds retained their original character.
Recommended !
erp
DEEP
LISTENINGS |Gianluigi
Gasparetti
Prepared
guitar and field recordings, says the cover. As usual, nobody could
imagine or guess it, because of all the filtering and manipulation the
sound has been put through: where are the strings? what kind of recording
has been made? On which ground? In which ambient? Who do those slow
sound waves belong to? Who are the ghosts roaming through fluctuating
movements? Whose the steps and the panting breath are? Are they living
creatures or just machines dumped on the beach of some remote planet?
After terrestrial oceans, Mystery Sea land at the outside space with
a fanciful record, which might resemble the thinking ocean in Stanislaw
Lem’ ‘Solaris’, the thinking ocean that great Tarkowskij had conceived
green and in an enduring electric activity, a liquid, omnipresent brain.
Roars and hermetic noises, sounds stolen from cosmos, atonal texture
and gloomy sirens place themselves above the silence, and take us up
to levels unreachable levels. This is the most experimental, rambling,
and highly evocative record in the series, a black hole for the mind,
and a further step on the lovecraftian insanity scale.
deeplistenings
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