Review | By Richard Allen / a closer listen
Tim Ingold & Carmen Pardo & Mikel R. Nieto | A soft hiss of this world
Four years ago, Mikel R. Nieto released Dark Sound, a black book with black type and a black CD that served as a meditation on noise. A soft hiss of this world is the yin to its yang, a white book with white type and a clear Flexi-disc that addresses silence, sound and snow. The two form a fascinating diptych. Dark Sound is the more political, an indictment of the intrusion of noise from profit barons and non-indigenous people; in this stark context, silence implies silencing. Yet while A soft hiss of this world is less overt, its societal implications range from the censorship of speech to the extinguishing of languages. Just as snow can muffle or amplify, and the color white can mean all colors or none, the winter landscape ~ and in this case, soundscape ~ is transformed into a tabula rasa. Again, those who purchase the bundle will need to deal with some necessary frustration. The type is best read on an angle in direct light (sunlight being better than artificial light in this instance). […]