The Australian-based composer, media artist, and curator Lawrence English is readying A Mirror Holds The Sky, an immersive album of field recordings from the Amazon. Recorded on location in 2008 while part of the Francisco López Mamori Sound Project, a several-week residency in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, English recorded over fifty hours of sound material during his stay. However, the artist reports that they remained dormant in his archive until recently. He explains:
“If I am to be honest, it has taken me the better part of a decade to know how to approach this archive of materials. I owe a debt of gratitude to Chico Dub at Festival Novas Frequências, who very gently encouraged me to realize a piece for diffusion as part of his program in 2019. That invitation returned my ears and in the process unlocked a way of approaching the mammoth 50+ hours of recordings I had gathered during my time there.“
Comprised of six long-form tracks, often recorded with the help of his wife Rebecca, A Mirror Holds The Sky offers a transformational listening experience. While English grew up on the land of the Ngajanji people in Australia, engendering a deep appreciation for the rainforest, his time in the Amazon seems to have left an indelible experience on his psyche. It is this dense matrix of creation and destruction, in the form of sound, that is the focus here. Lawrence offers:
“The jungle is never silent. Even when you might expect the Amazon to be hushed, in those hours before dawn or in the heat of the midday sun, it is hardly what could be described as quiet. What might be true to say though is during these moments where the chorus of insects takes a step back, the jungle opens just a little. To listen in the jungle is to listen in close relief – in every square meter, thousands of insects cry out, their voices reducing the horizon of listening to a matter of centimeters at certain times of the day (and night). The sensation is sensorially disorienting and frankly, overpowering.“
Through the artist’s ear for sonic detail, A Mirror Holds The Sky offers listeners a reminder of the importance of a deep engagement with the world around them. Here, the jungle opens up a vast orchestration of sound activity, reminding us that the music of life is ever-present if we know how to listen for it. Reflecting on his time in the rainforest, English reminds us:
“Once you step into the Amazon, it prompts us (strongly) to refocus the perspective we hold of ourselves, of our ways of being, of our understandings, and it (not so gently) reminds us that we are but one very minor function in an equation that extends in all directions across time, and space.“
A Mirror Holds The Sky is due out on CD and digitally September 3rd through the artist’s ROOM40 label. Look for the release to be accompanied by a 48-page book of photographs taken on location. Below, you can watch a trailer for the project.
