experimentalfield recordingssound art

CD – Persistence of Sound

Rubbish Music is a project that brings together two central figures in sound experimentation: Kate Carr, a sound artist specializing in field recording, and Iain Chamber, an academic active in the fields of anthropology, sociology and cultural studies, a theorist with a longstanding interest in aesthetic and performative practices. Together they explore the relationship between sound and context, merging their respective expertise in an acoustic investigation that moves between epistemological research and compositional sensitivity. On Fatbergs, the conceptual framework is the one suggested by the moniker: that is, smelly waste that proliferates in our cities in the form of wet wipes, diapers, food scraps, fats and oils, a not-so-symbolic metaphor for what is dirty, rejected and rotten in our society. Through five layered compositions, Carr and Chamber invite an immersion in the territories of everyday abjection, transforming the invisible into the audible. These underground agglomerations become the starting point for a narrative that goes beyond simple documentation. Industrial noises, aquatic reverberations and abrasive frequencies intertwine in restless soundscapes, outlining a taxonomy of contemporary garbage. The entire work is crossed by a constant tension: the sound material that evokes decomposition and waste is contrasted by a rigorous, almost ordered compositional structure, which gives a paradoxical aesthetic to the waste itself. The album reminds us that nothing really disappears: what we throw away returns, transformed but present, to question us on the consequences of our habits. Only the irony of the titles and, in part, the ‘cleanliness’ of the result manage to attenuate the sense of unease for something that, despite being the result of the lack of an overall ecological vision, also concerns our individual conscience. Fatbergs is not just a sound experience, but a profound reflection on what we choose to ignore. What ends up underground – physically and metaphorically – is not erased, but only excluded from our perception. Rubbish Music force us to listen to the very thing we distance ourselves from, restoring artistic and conceptual dignity to the repressed and the degraded. Carr and Chamber thus make a gesture that is both political and aesthetic, showing how art can intervene in the margins of urban life to open spaces of awareness. The result is a disturbing and sophisticated work, capable of precisely combining irony, theoretical rigor and sonic complexity.

Rubbish Music – Fatbergs