The Queen of Cans and Jars

Listened to this for the first time today and it is probably one of the most striking audial experiences I've had in quite a while. This is a five disc album, each disc of which is four tracks of exactly twelve minutes each. Materially it's within the zone of field recordings and musique concrète, collaging nature recordings, minimalist instrumental work, and electronics. Purely on this level I think it's extremely well-executed. The short length of the tracks (by the standard of this sort of thing) ensures it doesn't get dull or drawn-out and it's very evocative and quite varied.

That said, I think this is also a pretty excellent example of conceptual art and I'll try to sum up what this album is about succinctly (Pisaro goes into extensive detail in the booklet if you'd like to read more).

Nature Denatured and Found Again originates in a series of annual "sound walks" Pisaro and collaborators took along the Gross Mühl river, which flows from upper Austria to the Danube. Each year they would walk along the next section of the river, making field recordings and stopping at shelters set along the way for short concerts. Each disc originates in that year's recorded material and represents a transforming and development of Pisaro's interaction with nature and the artists.

1. Disc 1 (2011): Field recordings of just nature as well as some musicians playing in nature. Lightly manipulated an emphasizing the interaction between the music and the natural sounds.
2. Disc 2 (2012): Similar recording sources but this time he duplicates the recordings he's using and sets them on time intervals, creating canons of overlapping sounds and instruments.
3. Disc 3 (2013): Purely recordings of the river. Pisaro uses bandpass filters to isolate different frequencies from his samples and then assembles them into "chords" which form the basis of the tracks.
4. Disc 4 (2014): This year the walk was canceled. Fittingly, these tracks feature no field recordings at all and are entirely electronic drones and noise recorded in-studio.
5. Disc 5 (2015): A return of sorts to the style of disc 1, but five years later and on the other end of the river. Moves from more highly emphasizing the instruments to slowly pushing away before fittingly ending on an unaltered field recording of water and birds.

Like any good conceptual art, while it is an excellent listen on its own, I think knowing about the process adds so much. It becomes such an interesting exploration of space over time and how we interact with it. Returning to place regularly and seeing a new facet of it each time, experiencing the ways the sounds change as time passes, grappling with how we relate to nature when often we feel separate from it, and so on. And it simply flows very well as an entire four hour sonic experience. Just a truly tremendous piece of work that really blew me away.

https://michaelpisaro.bandcamp.com/album/nature-denatured-and-found-again