Text by Robin Peckham
Hong Kong sound artist Edwin Lo’s latest release “Auditory Scenes: the other side of Tides in Limbo” may be a conceptual first: the work presents itself as the B-side track of a live performance. Premiering during the Sidekick Theatre Festival, this piece, “Tides in Limbo,” was performed with Fee Chan and Kayeun Kwok. For this recording, Edwin Lo weaves together live elements, studio composition, and field recording to elaborate on the dialectic process of playing and listening; the listener here gains access to the aural equivalent of the primal scene, experiencing the pace and confusion of both composition and reflection. This is the soundtrack to a live soundtrack, or experimental music accompanied by the sound of its own making.
Consisting of one track of just over twenty minutes in length, “The Other Side” can nevertheless be segmented into several basic units: the last section is more obviously live, including all of the signifiers of presence, while the first section is markedly cleaner. As it turns out, this opening segment is actually the first track played during the live performance recorded for the second bit.
The track opens with voices overlapping like waves, their echoes drifting across each other. After two minutes a ringing distortion begins to gain precedence, and a low buzzing gathers strength. Then there is a sharp snapping noise, and the buzzing disappears. Now we hear a repetitive slapping sound accompanied by dull ringing, all followed by the evidence of chairs moving and raised voices. Suddenly it is quieter, with something like radio static in the background. The overlap effects are less prominent, and we hear the announcement of a flight attendant. Almost seven minutes in we hear something that could be waves, or the sound of a jet engine. The volume is intensified, but there is no qualitative change or acceleration of pace. Then a set of tinny sounds is introduced, and the waves feel like breathing. The breathing stops. That odd twinkling sound moves to the foreground as its volume increases and its treble falls away. Past the ten minute mark a series of warped, nebulous sounds becomes apparent in the background while the tinny sound returns and then fades out. We now hear breathing sounds again, deeper and raspier than before, and they become steadier like the sound of a jet. Voices return, set against an ominous warped effect in the bacground. Then there is rain, or perhaps the sound of a plastic bag crumpling. Someone yells. Then there is thunder, or maybe running. At sixteen minutes everything but that ominous tone fades away, only to be replaced by a loud static. It seems like a hose, or the sound of air pressure over a pure audio signal. That ominous sound returns to the background, dominated by a static white noise. At what could be a climax, everything fades away. We hear stage noise. Maybe Cantonese opera: it is vaguely rhythmic, like a strumming of a stringed instrument or something being shaken. Applause. The sound of a moving microphone.
Much of the track is rather abstract, consisting of a range of field work incuding underwater recordings, recordings of water, and assorted contact microphone experiments manipulated into a malleable sonic material used as an affective tool during the live performance. The human voices present within the text–all Cantonese except for the English-speaking flight attendant–supposedly come from both discussion of the sound project during its conceptual stage, and later from the actresses on stage during the performance.
One of the weightiest criticisms leveled against this type of sound art is its resemblance to a low budget horror movie soundtrack–which, admittedly, was the first thought to cross my mind during the opening moments of the work. Here, however, the work is in fact intended to function partially as a soundtrack; the piece only truly becomes interesting when it begins to refer to its own process of production. Perhaps its value is at least partially anthropological, offering an imaginative vision of the techniques of composition at a time when much of the experimental sound and music community has turned towards harsh noise and live improvisation. Edwin Lo seems to sidestep the question of the quality of the composition itself (this is a dramatic soundtrack, after all), opening his work to a wider conceptual reading. Strikingly, this disc is not simply a documentary compilation of the thoughts and aural sketches that went into the preparation of a live performance; instead, it draws these element together with the improvised and uncontrollable qualities of the latter activity, resulting in a “third sound” that rethinks the natural territory of composition. If used properly, this innovative technique could help describe a potential trajectory of new music moving forward.
