Felicity Mangan :: String Figures (Elevator Bath)

Felicity Mangan’s String Figures is an immersive exploration of field recordings, electronic textures, and string timbres, blending natural sounds from wetlands with lush, slowly evolving drones and quasi-bioacoustic compositions. Across six pieces, she transforms subtle environmental cues—water, frogs, moss, and children at play—into meditative, minimalistic soundscapes that range from austere elegance to rich, enveloping resonance.

Drones dance with natural resonance

In this beautiful collection of tactile drones and electronic tonalities infused with natural sounds and rhythms, Felicity Mangan combines field recordings, electroacoustic composition, and electronic music techniques to create immersive, quasi-bioacoustic music aided by digital audio tools. The six pieces on String Figures sample and combine the resonant timbres of strings and electromagnetic textural fields with field recordings from wetlands.  She has the moon with her, by the water. From the picture it could be a pond or slow moving river, I can almost hear the slow moving water. What are she and the moon up to? Listen, so close to the water’s edge, lush in the brush and abundant sounding flora. There is a strong reflection in the water, she has a twin image. These elements were shaped through digital processing into polyphonic, angular assemblages, ranging from austere minimalism to sumptuous drones and elegiac ambience. Her compositions have been presented in multichannel installations, live performances, site-specific settings, and published works on labels such as Longform Editions, Mappa Editions, One Instrument, and Warm Winters, among others.

Still your mind. Starting with an emphasis on field recordings which are enhanced, to become a classic EM Kosmiche drama, and growing from one long note from each member of the orchestra. The blending elements slightly wag and wave, tugging at all of the harmonics. Always a sumptuous ambience and quasi-bioacoustics, simple electronic poetics leveraged with the recording arts and deploying a variety of instrumental sounds. Consistently minimal in approach, with long sustained drone style tones, each track slowly fades in and slowly fades out.

Side A: Kids are playing behind the sound of lawn sprinklers, juxtaposing austere minimalism and found sounds. I am attracted to the phasing patterns between several sprinklers. “Watering Device” (7:20) emerges very slowly, a low tone, a buzz, warm and sinister. Refreshing and wet from hissing, I could find no spills or drips, just kids playing in splashes. There is an ominous hum too. Here come the warm jets, with wind in the distance. “Cello Figures” (8:44) contains samples of cello performed by Moritz Draheim, zillions of tiny cellos playing one note, odd field recording of a dark tunnel and a squeaky toy being finessed into subtle barking squeaks, from within a shifting sandy cloud of bowed sounds drone style. These shifting clouds of sand are becoming stronger, they sort of swell and then diminish and then swell again, blending as time goes by. The richness increases like melted butter spreading over my ears dripping and getting into the deepest delicious places, disguised gorgeous drones.

Deep dark bubbly “Magnetic Moss” (6:24) bounces electronic tones and pulses around the stereo field, a dark monotone boogie with a jittery low tone. In the natural world, it might be assumed that moss does not do much, it persists and constantly slowly grows, filled with tiny stringy chaos, magnetic pulls or pushes or nothing at all, and moss would be on the forest floor. Clearly magnetic moss is different. Dodging and weaving, the action is to just bubble away, a short wave radio in a wet cave, a loose beat, a grand bubbling boogie flow with textures.

Immersive tones mirror verdant spaces ::

Side B has a very slow emergence, the gentle hum takes us into “Invisible Strings” (5:36) an elegiac ambient piece, sorrowful with a very subtle emergence of a creeping wandering tone. Once it reaches a moderate level new things start to happen, the tone progresses while getting stronger. The main ingredient is granular sampled bowed strings, restless, enduring and sustained, a lingering  microscopic shifting perspective. “String Thing” (8:08) contains samples of cello performed by Moritz Draheim. Things are getting busy, large glowing fields are interacting on a huge scale. A rising electronic sky with rich displays of chromatic explorations between the individual artists performing is widening and constantly gradually brightening. I wonder, are we in an illuminated huge wet cave? The reverberations sound wet, the clouds weave through each other reaching around and flowing into and out of each other in a series of long slow breathless fades.

For the finale, the strange combination of one tone and the kinetic splashes and rhythms, with southern leopard frogs recorded by Kevin Songer, wandering deeper at an easy pace, to barely surface and then to disappear, only to come back a little differently, tones exploring the void, “Magnet, Paper, Frog” (3:44). The magnet might be the radiation, and the paper could be the flat imaginary planes that go off into infinity, the frogs are many and they make wet noises. Everyone loves a wet echoey place where tones and drones come and go, the frogs are chattering out there. Sometimes they get louder.

This is Felicity Mangan‘s first solo vinyl LP and first release for Elevator Bath.

Written, produced, and mixed by Felicity Mangan.
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering.
Lacquer cut by Andreas Lubich at Loop-O Mastering.
Photography by Constanze Flamme; Layout by Colin Sheffield.

String Figures is available on Elevator Bath. [Bandcamp]