#murmer

[dustedmagazine]

Manja Ristic and Murmer — The Scaffold (Unfathomless)

Here is a remarkable and rare take on the art of collaboration. To call Manja Ristic and Patrick Tubin McGinley, who is known as Murmer, field recording practitioners is almost as misleading as it is to call these two odysseys collaborations, true but not the truth. Both artists freeze the verity of liquid instants and then render them calmly molten, transforming size and proximity into a syntax all their own. While most collaborations involve a concerto approach in which identity switches pride of place from moment to moment, The Scaffold is an exquisitely powerful melding out of which narrative rivers flow.

We’re told that Ristic and Murmer worked from 2020-2022 on this palimpsestic immersion, recording using sound sources from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Estonia. Like the album’s title though, those locations are only means to a sonically inclusive end. Murmer describes the difficulties of capturing a scaffold “singing,” a wonderfully anthropomorphic descriptor that might just as easily be applied to every sound and space opened up as the music eases onward. Michael Pisaro’s groundbreaking Transparent City series laid the groundwork for this “musical” transfiguration of place, or environment, and we hear that process as room tones are augmented in “zamišljena sjena vjetra”’s opening moments. Tone, point and timbre converge in increasing and amalgamating contrapuntal layers, each sound containing and negating its environment, scaffolding to construct a new one. The mechanical sounds and attendant squeaks beginning at 7:54 transform themselves into birdsong in listener perception, just as isolated rain drops lend their pitches to delicately aperiodic rhythmic occurrences beginning at 2:01 of the second piece, “kaugpääs; antenn.” Those sounds and their outcomes unify the pieces, individually and as a pair, various shades of rushing water ultimately taking on the characteristics of a busy speech-scape or the morphing drone perfectly complemented by the singing scaffold as it supports the first piece’s second half.

Magical moments abound. What is that gorgeous shift of focus, that transparent but iridescently pitched liquid, foregrounded with glassy certainty at 13:14 of the first piece, dead-center of the soundstage and highlighting the sonic clusters surrounding it? Can there be anything more ravishingly reverberant than those multi-frequency interjections 2:07 into the second piece? In their echoing repetition, they prefigure the best of all, the Requiem chant coalescing symbiotically with all that has preceded it but sitting comfortably behind it, worlds within worlds in transcendent correspondence, a support system as uneasy but as natural as the rush of voices and motorized life that brings the album from church to town in a life-affirming conclusion. These days, there’s little chance of a bad recording. What’s done with the recordings is the crux of each situation, and The Scaffold is a winner at all levels.

Marc Medwin

[ozkar-krapo]

MURMER

"In their Homes and in their Heads"

(7"EP. Drone rcds. 2007 / rec. 2005) [US]

[mr-kiwi-the-wizard]

What is the meaning of life¿

The worth of life, our life, another's life?

What is the meaning of life to a plant.

Grow. Consume nutrients. Bathe. sit. Reproduce. Grow some more. Get eaten or die.

We know their meaning and nurture them or prune then and even selectively breed and grow them because we know their meaning and purpose. Both given and apparent.

And us humans?

We seem to seek much the same.

[arkangelo-7]

Yes, a world in which the Justice League and the Avengers live side by side is objectively so fucking cool, but it also provides the DC/Marvel execs the opportunity to do the funniest fucking thing ever:

Make Slade Wilson and Wade Wilson cousins.

[dirtytransmasc]

Sevika definitely called Isha "Squeaker" and I will die on the hill.

[girldriveroscar]

dearly sorry if anyones alrdy posted this but i Need it on my blog.

[sad-girl-hours23]

[thrice-freed-birdie]

Pidge? Um... is that you?

God this area is weird...

...

Pidge?

-🪶

Maddie? oh hi! i haven't seen you in a bit! how's it going?

[kirbyliker12]

today marks the day i Finally get return to dreamland deluxe (yeah. ive never played rtdl/rtdldx. idk i just didnt get it even though i really really Really wanted it #lol)

[sumpix]

Watch with sound on

[courierscamera]

#cottagecore #cozycore

or something

[h0t-p1nk-ch33tah-pr1nt]

UH OH I FEEL A GUSH POST COMING O

Yall please... ik me nd my little minons cannon hobie as more shy when he flirts, BUT HES SO TEMDER WITH KATH, Lucy inspired this bit and maybe Marly, but Hobie can sing, he performs on stage all the time wdym his voice doesn't get a lil raspy. But it's the little songs he does for her, she thinks it's so cheesy, she'd come home after going out, her whole body aches, kicking off her heels while Hobie is by the stove, slumping over he just beckons her to come near the hot stove to sit down,

He doesn't infantilise her, not at all, he knows how overstimulating it gets running about, the little questions of "can I touch you?" Or "do you need me to do this?" OUGH, after she's done and cleaned up, all they do is lay on the couch Hobie humming his song to try and hit a good high note, Kath gives him a little forehead kiss.

"Don't ruin your voice for me."

"I'm not." He says rubbing his throat.

[breadhalfburnt]

good morning everyone

there is a cat outside so now i can’t sleep

what are fun, relatively quiet activities to enjoy on this god awful occasion?

[johnnyvalance]

im just a girl 🎀 (i listened to mostly just later from ALNM on loop today)

[theblob1958]

my stove is sooooo noisy when it's on it makes me want to hurt something