Noise and field recordings jar against off tune resonance that pulls into the red before a plateau is found. Cold winds blast over this minimal plain, wails and the rattle of chains ghost over a stark drum. This spectral chill soon dawns as birdsong and human voice mingle in the warmth of morning sunlight.
Many moons ago I did an English degree. I have memories of it being pretty uninspiring but on reflection it put me in decent stead. Drama I particularly enjoyed. It wasn’t so much the acting or staging side of things that floated my boat, it was the texts, the straight to the point nature of a play. I still read a good bit of drama when I can. One I covered in university but whose plot had eluded my ever more shaky recollection until I flicked through it again was Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead, one of the first works of Tom Stoppard to gain acclaim.
The premise is pretty simple, the tale of two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet are given centre stage to become protagonists in the once untold story of their ultimate demise. It’s a clever idea, to transplant secondary characters into leading roles, and one which has been taken up across the globe now, Wicked for example. To this day I have never seen Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern on stage. However, I have heard a soundtrack to a performance.
For two years now NKT, a London based imprint, has focussed on abstract experiments and ambient soundscapes. The tape label is part of a larger project and to date has explored the music of Nokuit to date, that is until the arrival of Presidiomodelo and their first solo physical release.
Thirty minutes in length, The Inner Empire is a work of deep absorption by the collective of Denis Frank, Evgeny Lemeshonok and Vladimir Bocharov. A sea of sound, rising and falling, introduces the record. Noise and field recordings jar against off tune resonance that pulls into the red before a plateau is found. Cold winds blast over this minimal plain, wails and the rattle of chains ghost over a stark drum. This spectral chill soon dawns as birdsong and human voice mingle in the warmth of morning sunlight. As in Elsinore of its time, a wraith-like presence haunts the entire length of magnetic tape. A pale audio apparition hovers in lingering whistles and faint footsteps, in the smoke and haze of animal, or human, chatter. Less present on the album are some of the tenets of the Stoppard’s play. The tongue in cheek whimsy of the Danish prince’s childhood chums, their inane silliness and their unbelievable resignation to their unsealed fate. At times this playfulness comes to light, embodied noodling flute for example, yet that is submerged in the stoical gravity of an ocean of atmospherics. Nevertheless, the dream like quality of the original prose is everywhere to be heard. Although the score produced by Presidiomodelo was revised and extended for The Inner Empire, the core of the original is as persistent as Claudius’ guilt. The boundary between real and fake, theatre and threat, the border between ephemeral and eternal, is in a constant state of flux with new lines being written in the ever-changing tide of sound.
It is quite a challenge to use drama to inspire music, especially if that drama is one where humor and even silence are methods of communicating a message. Nevertheless, to attempt such a task is both bold and daringly creative and perhaps the better lens, or ear, to experience this cassette is one that realizes the themes of the ephemeral and solitude that The Inner Empire captures so well.
The Inner Empire is available on NKT.
