ESR008 (LP) - released on 9/30/2008
Purchase/Download
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Tracks
1. tendrils
2. hide & seek [MP3]
3. children at namhae
4. why is the fish shiny?
5. at a distance
6. train ride to pusan
7. arrive and vanish in stars
8. sunnudagur
Preview
Details
Witness an album of dreamy sparkling soundscapes. Like exploring the hazy shallow water of everyday consciousness, Soeng takes the listener into the deep blue bliss of the forgotten self. The pieces on this warm watery masterpiece, drift in and out of existence. Gone are linear forms of time, tension, release, build-ups, come-down and all that''s left is pure beautiful sound. If Congrotronics took the amplified kalimba to a late night African dance party, Soeng, brings the electric kalimba to the calm water''s edge in the early morning after.
For more about the eKalimba, ben used on Soeng, please visit ekalimba.com.
Press
sonomu On Soeng, Ben Fleury-Steiner - prolific American collaborator, head of his own cutting-edge CDR label - crafts some very sophisticated pieces with little post-production, beginning with "Tendrils", the first of several tracks centred around the electric kalimba, an instrument I had no idea existed.
Essentially an electronically-enhanced African thumb piano, it appears to be the invention of firebrand David Bellinger. Seemingly improvised upon, this electric kalimba has enough organic resonance to still sound "woody" and with the exotic and humid ambience Fleury-Steiner creates around it, mostly with "found sounds", it evokes imaginary or real southeast Asian jungle surroundings, gibbons hopping around the canopy overhead. For indeed, "soeng" is Korean for "nature".
Even the voices hiding deep in the background express an exoticism, a found and very attractive foreign language. As the album progresses, the soundtrack incorporates more and more loop, tape reversal and reverb and becomes more abstract and enticing, until it finally takes something of a more recognizabe shape, rounded off nicely with "Sunnudagar", to which husband-and-wife duo Northern Valentine have added airy keyboard and guitar.
Creating rarefied and unique aural environments is the main brief of experimental ambient music, though so few actually really succeed. Fleury-Steiner certainly has here - I´ve never heard any place like it before. Very accomplished, very layered. Rewards repeated, and deeper, listenings.
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