ALAN LAMB - NIGHT PASSAGE (Rare Double CD Version) [Dorobo, Australia, 1998]

Night Passage is another release culled from Alan Lamb's renowned "wire" recordings, and then some. If you're unfamiliar with Mr. lamb's previous sound excursions, actual field recordings were made of a half-mile section of abandoned telegraph wires located in Western Australia's outback.

The wires, dubbed "The Faraway Wind Organ", are sometimes buffeted by heavy gales blasting across the barren landscape, and other times gently stroked by subtler breezes. The wind action results in an incredible range of sound. The first two tracks were orignally recorded in 1984 and 1983 respectively.

In the almost-25-minute-long title track, the wires span the gamut of their repertoire... from subtle metallic pings, to resonant rocketship drones, to raucous saw-like buzzing. Occasional environmental sounds add an extra sense of place. The poles and cross beams creak under their continually straining load. Frankly, I would like to see more artwork and even more liner notes. I have my mental images though, of this gigantic, forgotten, unintentional instrument, continually howling into the desert void.

Last Anzac opens on a strong mechanical thrumming, sounding like a contact mike attached directly to an overloaded transformer. The powerful drone shifts through various phases of existence, sometime growing even more intense, other times fading to a soft, almost-tuned chorus. Squawling waves like feedback resound as no other stringed instrument could aspire to. Unfortunately, the Faraway Wind Organ was eventually decimated by lightning and termites.

The disc heads into new territory though, with Meditation on SPring8. This piece was recorded at a festival in Kobe, Japan to commemorate the opening of the world's largest electron accelerator. Rather than discovering the sound source, Lamb and friends actually created their own wind organ, the SPring 8 wind organ. Besides producing sound by natural wind, Lamb actually "plays" this instrument by bowing it with a two-metre long bamboo bow strung with nylon. This 12:11 interlude is comprised mainly of a continually phasing bass hum with a metallic shimmering, overall a "cleaner" sound. The section was recorded after a typhoon, and portions of the track include a faint crackling which, according to the liner notes, is the sound of water drying in the acoustic transducers.

If you've a predilection for drones and/or found sounds, the result is nothing less than fascinating. If you're into drones and found sounds, you'll simply be in heaven, though occasionally it's a pretty noisy place. An artful documentation of a natural and man-made phenomena, Night Passage definitely intrigues me. I raise my Thumb high into the howling night winds.

Review by: Spiderbytes

RAR [1]
RAR [2]