Ard Bit :: Field Recordings – 04 Balkans (Self Released)

The ambient backdrop Ard Bit waves as to underline the quiet and slow country life depicted in the field recordings.

Underlining the quiet and slow country life depicted in (the) field recordings

In case you wonder about the 04 mentioned in the title, Ard Bit, a composer sometimes also known as Ard Janssen from Rotterdam (see also Vital Weekly #1357 for a review of his Music For Delirious Episodes / Igloo review here), has three previous releases in his Field Recording series, with sounds from Sri Lanka, Nolay (which is in France) and Poland. These three are digital-only works on his Bandcamp; name your price. “A series based on a continuous curiosity and explorations of (natural) sound fields,” and to which Ard Bit adds “ambient layers.”

The fourth release is relatively short, twenty-two minutes, and contains recordings from “Sarajevo’s Olympic Bobsleigh to the Cursed Mountains in Albania and back via the small peaceful village Miholjače in Bosnia to the beautiful Kamnik-Savinja Alps in Slovenia.” He says it wasn’t easy to decide upon which material to use. I wonder why. Is he that critical? There is plenty of room left on the disc. None of the descriptions can easily be heard in the seven pieces on this disc, but I’m sure it is all there. It is also a bit of a mystery if various field recordings sound at the same time, superimposed as it were. I don’t know. What I do know is that the music is of great beauty. The field recordings, whatever they are, picture quiet rural places in which farmers maintain their ancient equipment, people converse at the market square, and birds are out in sunny fields.

The ambient backdrop Ard Bit waves as to underline the quiet and slow country life depicted in the field recordings. All of which I think is beautiful, even when I think some of this could extend beyond the few minutes this lasts. A track such as “Vervloekte Bergen” is, at five minutes, one of the longer ones, and one sees why this works so much better than the one-a-half-minute of “Löpe,” which its rural walkabout, the start of something great that doesn’t come. Combining ambient music and field recordings isn’t the most original idea, yet Ard Bit does a great job at that, and he should build bigger/longer pieces of music to get the listener in the right mood and stay there for some time.

Review by: Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly #1400. Reprinted with permission.

Field Recordings – 04 Balkans is available on Bandcamp.