ICR
Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter's voluntary three-month banishment to
the icy realms of Lofoten, Norway has borne fruit in the form of this
double album on ICR. As was reported, these two prime movers of
experimental sound were sent high above the Arctic Circle May through
July of this year, with limited recording equipment and no musical
instruments, to record a series of audio responses to their harsh
environment, which were then transmitted to the local mariner's radio
station at unannounced intervals. Stapleton and Potter have further
edited and processed the original broadcasts, ending up with a total of
two hours of sound, seven lengthy tracks. Shipwreck Radio
works best when Stapleton and Potter seem to be genuinely interacting
and responding to their alien, inhospitable environment, rather than
falling back on familiar NWW strategies. The microcosmic sound world of
ice slowly melting and cracking apart merge with the lonely, distant
calls of arctic seabirds on the compelling "June 17," which slowly
backslides into glacial crevasse where a mutually indecipherable
conversation between Stapleton and a Norwegian child is repeatedly
looped and mutated. Each track is named for the date that it was
broadcast, and a handy map of the Lofoten Archipelago is printed on the
discs themselves, showing the geographical location where each
recording was made. When the artists seem to be most engaged with their
environment — forming makeshift percussion out of blocks of ice, parts
of vessels and disused metal scrap and transforming recordings of
arctic creatures, water runoff and wind tunnel noises into organic
drones — Shipwreck Radio really clicks as an album and a
concept. On the opposite end of the spectrum are tracks like the
album's opener "June 15," which renders the source recordings
completely unrecognizable, digitally processing them into a distorted,
post-industrial rhythmic dirge that wears out its welcome well before
the ten-minute mark has been reached. Colin Potter's droning muse seems
to have exerted a stronger influence on disc two, which exploits
environmental noises and subtle looping and processing to create
textural expanses of beautifully chilly ambience. "June 5" sounds like
an orchestra slowly succumbing to the pulse-deadening effects of
hypothermia, stretching out each chord to epic lengths, as ever more
minute bits of audio detritus pan around the stereo channels. As the
album trudges on, things become darker, more menacing and more
sluggish, perhaps as a result of the inevitable fatigue experienced in
such a hostile environment where the sun unmercifully shines for nearly
24 hours each day. There is an organic, impromptu feel to much of this
music that lends it an immediacy not usually experienced with Nurse
With Wound music, which often seems rather painstakingly processed,
mutated and generally tortured to within an inch of its life. This
helps the album operate as a sort of freeform travelogue or audio
diary. The first edition of 100 copies came with a bonus disc, Lofoten Deadhead
(a reference to the excerpted bit of Norwegian radio where a local
explains why the Grateful Dead is "the ultimate band"), which contains
more variations on the same audio sources, as well as a 30-minute track
of untreated recordings of Stapleton and Potter experimenting with
different methods of creating compelling noises from their
surroundings, fussing about with objects and arguing with each other.
It's unfortunate that this was not included on the album proper, as it
is both entertaining and provides a glimpse into the duo's working
methods that enriches the material on the other two discs. Taken
together, even with its momentary lapses of originality, Shipwreck Radio is a fascinating entry in both artists' substantial discographies.
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