You Only Live Ice compellingly presents a landscape initially at rest, then draped, as if in timelapse, in dense tonal swathes, and wracked with electrostatic gusts and the chromatic violence of the Aurora Borealis, tension ratcheting up to a oneiric denouement.
The last decade has seen Alessandro Tedeschi rope in a series of artists—the likes of Lull, Loscil, Rapoon, Francisco López, and his Netherworld—in Glacial Movements‘ singular mission, taking his cue from Thomas Köner‘s Mother-of-all Ice-works, Permafrost, of variations on a theme of ‘places that man has forgotten …icy landscapes …fields of flowers covered eternally with ice… icebergs colliding amongst themselves.’
Latest to step up to the Arctic Ice Shelf is Philippe Petit, who trails himself knowingly as a ‘musical travel agent,’ with a cast of 1000s of collaborator friends and labels (Aagoo, Alrealon Musique, Beta Lactam Ring, Important, Home Normal, HelloSquare, Monotype, Sub Rosa, Public Eyesore, Southern UK, Staubgold, Utech, to name but twelve). The Marseille sonician declares his love for digital processing of textures—‘prepared strings, various clicks & electro-acoustic or field recordings forming a tapestry of sound’ and ‘prepared vinyls,’ with which he creates deep sound collages. The web-blurb is more upbeat than the billing for You Only Live Ice, wherein ‘atmospheres and dramaturgy lead the ear into a suspended world, like being entrapped within an Arctic ice shelf,’ are explored in two parts—shorter first de-/re-constructed in a longer second. “Part I” bespeaks the stasis and radiance of the snowy expanses. “Part II” sets up an insistent three-chord recursion, only to have its droning inexorability disrupted by the creaking of ice and floe motion sonorities, drifting evermore into elsewhereness.
You Only Live Ice compellingly presents a landscape initially at rest, then draped, as if in timelapse, in dense tonal swathes, and wracked with electrostatic gusts and the chromatic violence of the Aurora Borealis, tension ratcheting up to a oneiric denouement.
You Only Live Ice: Music From The Arctic Ice Shelf is available on Glacial Movements.
