(2020) Lawrence English - Field Recordings from the Zone


Review:
Brisbane composer and artist Lawrence English has released a collection of five ambient recordings, titled Field Recordings from the Zone. The five tracks were recorded in various locales through Queensland, following the aftermath of the Australian bushfires. The atmospheric sounds – including gusts of howling wind and bursts of low-flying aircraft – were recorded just as the COVID-19 lockdown began taking place around the nation. The metaphorical ‘Zone’ English describes is “a place we find ourselves in right now, where we just might still have time to reshape the world around us if we pause to acknowledge and address our own actions”. “Sometimes, we need to stop (everything) if we are going to start to realise new ways of being in this world,” he said in a statement. “Field Recordings from the Zone’ is a contemplation of this proposition. We are already in The Zone even if we refuse (or fail) to recognise it. It is a place that bares marks of familiarity but maintains a restless psychogeography that can shift without warning. English also said that the collection’s title was a nod to “the speculative fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky”. “Their text [is] a perfect parallel to appreciate the uncertainties of what may lie ahead,” he said. “It is also a study of the world in these moments of radical public action. The work seeks to recognise that to take our acquired methodologies, knowledge and habituated lives forward without examination reduces the possible futures that splinter infinitely before us.”


Tracklist:
01 - Know Your Exit
02 - The Other Side of Knowing
03 - The Only Way Out Is In
04 - I Thought I Heard You Call
05 - The Picnic


Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits