Reviews

Lament of the Wolf, by Łukasz Komła, at nowamuzyka.pl

translated with Google Translate and with the help of Jan Grabowski

Pons and Mosh come together on the joint vinyl release "Of Wolves and People". They started working on this material in 2019 online - by exchanging files. While Melissa tracked the howling of the Iberian wolf in Portugal, Mosh focused on one particular gray wolf in Germany. The result is two compositions lasting over twenty minutes.
The first recording belongs to Pons and is titled "Lament of the wolf". When describing this fragment, there is a historical outline of this beautiful animal, showing its negative image, often identified with the devil and unclean powers, which is why it was constantly hunted in Europe for centuries and repeatedly publicly tortured, etc. In recent decades in Portugal, the Iberian wolf population has recorded a staggering increase decline, pushing the remaining packs north of the Rio Douro, whereas they once inhabited almost the entire country. From what I have read, conservation measures are being implemented through sensitization, education and the introduction of sustainable methods. And it doesn't matter what latitude we are in, everywhere - not only in Poland (!) - despite the efforts of specialized organizations, the image of the wolf is still met with doubts and resistance in some regions.

"Lament of the wolf" is a complex composition based on field recordings - of course with the howling of wolves, their barking and the "breath" of the pulsating night. The moments of juxtaposing string instruments with moaning, whining or simply the collective "chattering" of wolves are very interesting, almost cinematic. Around the tenth minute there comes a theme - and lasts almost to the end - you could have thought it was written by Jóhann Jóhannsson himself… and I even have flashes of the music by Ryūichi Sakamoto, Alva Noto and Bryce Dessner for the film "The Revenant" directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. At the end, the heroes/heroines of this album could not be missing, i.e. the repeated howling of wolves, which are probably the most audible at this moment, with their high-pitched tones, forming a wolf-like, guttural avant-garde.

by Łukasz Komła, at nowamuzyka.pl

Mood: Cliffs, Vultures & Cycles of Death

 Translated from Turkish via deepl with the help of the author


Melissa Pons, who made a splash in the field recording community with her 2020 album Wolf Soundscapes, expands her landscape in this album and takes us to confront a matter of life and death on the edge of life.

The survival struggle of vultures and red-billed choughs, where rocks and trees embrace life and cause impressive sound echoes, clearly shows us the balance of the world we live in and makes us think. We can even go a little further and say; It also makes us think about the fear of death that we, as humans, selfishly create in our struggle for life.

This album is an auditory experience full of narratives that make us question the ways of thinking we have created as a human species, opening the doors to a more-than-human perspective. The human fear of death that I mentioned contains many messages that show that the active and passive life position in the ecosystem does not belong only to us and that we accept the return of our bodies to nature for environmental sustainability.

In each of the 13 recordings in the album, the sequence of recording the sounds that seem complex but ultimately maintain the calm balance of the living and inanimate balance in nature is obvious that Melissa Pons has unravelled many new ties in her own journey. In my recent conversations with Melissa, I must say that it made me very happy to see the different listening styles we, as field recording artists, seek to turn into practice.

"Field recording albums that have won hearts, Nature Field Recordist, and Earth.fm curator Melissa Pons has recently released her fifth soundscape album Cliffs, Vultures & Cycles of Death on Bandcamp.