CD - Gruenrekorder
The Mekong river is among the longest in Asia. It starts in Tibet and runs through Thailand, China's Yunnan province, Burma, Laos, Vietnam and finally Cambodia. Both in Lao and Thai languages the name Maè Nam Khong refers etymologically to the ancestral "mother", the origin of every feeling and thing. Eva Pöpplein and Janko Hanushevsky undertook an adventurous pilgrimage along the river, developing field recordings before reworking the sounds in post-production. Janko Hanushevsky added many parts on an unconventionally played electric bass, making use of drumsticks, golf balls, knitting needles and bottle tops. When listening, what really matters here is the changeable passage of the sounds, the metamorphosis of the environments, the way intense suggestions are raised: according to this approach the structured parts, field-recordings and added materials are treated in the same way, as raw contributions to be combined into a new form. We find ourselves enveloped in dark drones, tangential post-blues, auditive emergencies, jingles, bleeps, thuds and muffled reverberations. The imaginative "journey" is very redolent of "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, the inspirational text behind "Apocalypse Now" - a narration crowded with environmental resonances, voices and elegiac winces.
Aurelio Cianciotta