The sensation of proximity and precision is often dazzling—hiding in his sound hunter’s blind, he has conjured nature unaware of being observed and tethered its soft grasses, sweeping wind gusts, gliding falcons, and unidentifiable rustlings to tape.
[Release page] Pillowdiver’s Cassette Recordings are raw as wilderness. René Magraff has been working under that monicker in Berlin since 2008, creating air paintings that as a rule investigate the sound of one single instrument, in this case the guitar. Each of the six tracks are dated (“10th of August 2011”, “23rd of November 2011”) indicating, one would induce, the specific day spent recording it.
Though recorded by a man in a room in a big city, Pillowdiver is an outdoorsman, patiently and painstakingly creating an imagined, pristine hinterland under huge, autumnal skies. The sensation of proximity and precision is often dazzling—hiding in his sound hunter’s blind, he has conjured nature unaware of being observed and tethered its soft grasses, sweeping wind gusts, gliding falcons, and unidentifiable rustlings to tape. Clouds gather and darken then disperse without unleashing a drop of rain. A flock of geese biding its time unseen and unheard among the bullrushes suddenly takes flight. There is a chill in the air but a warm feeling in the gut. Someone calls for her mate through oaken branches.
This is all fabulation on my part, of course. I doubt that Magraff was thinking of evoking an idea of wilderness with his guitar-and-effects pieces. And yet somehow, his introspective ambient landscaping leads me to behold these broad horizons. Majesty, that’s the word: Cassette Recordings has majesty. It’s so much grander than a man in a room.
Cassette Recordings is available on Analogpath. [Release page]
