Unlike the previous release, on 03 Poland, Ard Bit adds what he calls ‘ambient layers’ back home in Rotterdam.
Blending field recordings into works of ambient music
In a previous review of Ard Bit’s work (Vital Weekly 1400), I mentioned he has previous works with field recordings, which were ‘name your price,’ but these days come with a fixed price, and Ard Bit (Ard Janssen from Rotterdam) decided to release these on limited edition CDRs; twenty copies per release. The first on a shiny disc is the hour-long Poland recordings. In some of the titles, we know where these recordings were made—”Hotel Katowice,” “St. Barbara’s Church,” and “Mount Tatra.” As before, places of quiet sounds, natural environments and almost no humans (though not wholly absent). Unlike the previous release, on 03 Poland, Ard Bit adds what he calls ‘ambient layers‘ back home in Rotterdam. He uses guitars, electronics and synthesizers. While I enjoyed his previous album, which dealt with pure field recordings, I always appreciated adding musical sounds.
The pure version with only field recordings is always difficult to judge; are these unedited or edited? Moreover, it is not unimportant; if it is a place I have never been to, it is not easy to say something sensible about it. Now, at least, I can discuss it in more general musical terms. Ard Bit does a fine job of blending his field recordings into works of ambient music. There is, perhaps, a strange division here, with six pieces lasting about fifteen minutes and some with slightly unfulfilled potential. That is the risk of playing ambient music within a limited time frame. “Mount Tatra,” the album’s closing piece, is forty-five minutes of rocky structures and some acceptable ambient synthesizer drones being walked upon. This time, however, perhaps all too long and too much on drifting concerning field recordings and synthesizers; it could have been chopped up into various pieces.
It may seem I am complaining, but at the same time, I enjoy this album quite a lot. On one of those days when things slow down (or seemingly do so), I sat back and played this album a few times in a row, too lazy to get up and write these words or to want to change the tune, so in that sense, it was a most successful album.
Review by: Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly #1430. Reprinted with permission.
Field Recordings – 03 Poland is available on Bandcamp.
