Lawrence English – A Mirror Holds The Sky

Room 40

For his latest epic, composer Lawrence English has eschewed anything human-made and has chosen to weave a series of pieces from sounds recorded over a period spent in the Amazon.

Rather then putting down a recorder and allowing it to capture whatever happens and unleash that, he instead selected from fifty hours of material to create standalone pieces that maybe highlight a certain creature, or a certain ambience that is offset against a busy backdrop of immersive sounds, with those sounds placing the listener deep in the heart of the jungle.

Spread across seven sections on A Mirror Holds The Sky, the listener is overwhelmed by unfamiliar birds and the latent rustle of insects. Accidental rhythms are briefly captured and interact with one another before disappearing into the backdrop. There is the sense of a slow panning and forward movement through the jungle, the direction of sound constantly changing and the variety and intensity rises and falls. At times, it is like a free cacophony, a composition of mysterious players juxtaposed for maximum effect, all playing their hearts out with no realisation of their place in Lawrence’s grand plan.

A sinuous drone is the almost constant companion to these, moving surreptitiously, a literal teeming of sound, the air filled and vibrant. Accompanying this could be the knocking on the side of a boat or an influx of toads that resemble somebody playing the woodblocks. The perennial backdrop rises and falls, its intensity coming across as though it were being conducted. These different aspects of such a diverse habitat are fascinating to listen to in your own home and on one track, the sound of a storm tracking across the jungle bringing sheets of rain in its wake really help you appreciate being tucked up in the dry of indoors.

It is strange how some of the sounds are almost synthetic due to our lack of familiarity, I have never heard a bota rosa dolphin nor a screaming piha, and for these exotic sounds to be transported to my own home and then overlapped with others and constructed into a busy soundscape is more than I was expecting. Lawrence’s skill at this is impressive and his ability to inject a particular sound which you assume as a constant, and then remove it gradually and leave a noticeable void is great. This complex sculpting to produce a diverse but constant flow is testament to his love for the material and desire for the ideal facsimile.

If travelling to the Amazon feels too great an effort, but you like the idea of experiencing the sonic output of that extraordinary place, A Mirror Holds The Sky is perfect. Every home should have a copy just to show how diverse the world really is.

-Mr Olivetti-