HABITATS | Lasse-Marc Riek
GrD 15 | CD-R > [Sold Out]
The edition contains two discs: one for audio composition that opens with Riek’s introductory spoken word, and the other, which presents Habitats from Finland, a slideshow video that based on photographs by Anne-Berit Riek.
Artwork printed in B6 size folded sleeve. 150 hand-numbered copies was manufactured.
The work at hand, "Habitats", deals with habitats, areas and living spaces. In this particular case, these spaces were created from a pool of acoustic field recordings I realised while in Finland in Spring of 2007. Over the course of the past year, I have, for various reasons, increasingly been absorbed by the sounds emited by nature. The piece researches the interplay between natural elements on the one hand and passages I arranged at a later stage on the other. It deals with directional hearing and of course with the vast array of bird voices – as well as the silence one can detect in between all of these different sound sources. (Lasse-Marc Riek)
Excerpt:
1 Track (58′33″)
3LEAVES / 150 copies / CD-R / 3L002 /2010
Gruenrekorder / Germany / 2010 / GrD 15 / LC 09488
Frans de Waard | VITAL WEEKLY
The name Lasse-Marc Riek showed up before in Vital Weekly, but he’s mostly known as the man who runs the Gruenrekorder label. On that label you find many people working with pure field recordings, and that line of interest is also to be found in his own work. His ‚Habitats‘ release for the Hungarian label 3Leaves opens with a spoken word by him and he explains what we are hearing: field recordings made in Finland. That introduction is not really necessary. Print it on the cover – which he actually did: there is a list of places mentioned and the variety of birds he recorded (including their latin name – the man knows his birds). The recording of birds is great – even when they don’t make the same sense as they do to him. Its hard to say wether these recordings were combined into one, or wether they actually reflect a real time recording, which was then spliced together. The whole piece is separated into eigth parts, cut into one track on the release. A wonderful release of some great recordings, which make my longing for springtime even greater. Pure, poetic field recordings.
Ed Pinsent | The Sound Projector
From Budapest, another small-run release on the 3LEAVES label. Lasse-Marc Riek documents the outdoor nature and wildlife of Finland on Habitats (3L002), paying particular attention to wind, weather, water and birdsong. (Dozens of bird calls are catalogued on the cover). His concise and modest sleeve note reveals how his work his given him a deep understanding of the interconnectedness of forest life, and he advises us to listen to the “vast array of bird voices, as well as the silence one can detect in between all of these different sound sources.” A beautiful and serene record.
szola | Soundscaping
“Habitats” was recorded By Lasse-Marc Riek while in Finland in spring of 2007. The beginning of “Habitats” is narrated by Lasse-Marc. He explains that the record deals with habitats, areas and living spaces. The piece, he continues, researchers the interplay between natural elements on the one hand and passages he had arranged at a later stage. It deals with the directional hearing, a vast array of bird voices and the silence between these sounds.
The recording is divided into short segments of around five minutes, giving the listener enough time to let the ambience sink in and take hold. The formative early sounds in “Habitats” centre around water, a theme that will be the dominant backdrop in the final half of the record.
Already during the first few minutes we are intorduced to the Larus canus, better known as the common gull. The sounds of the different types of birds reflect the different spaces that Lasse-Marc Riek have explored through his recordings. The variation in the types of birds we hear are not only to seek out the ornithologst in the listener, but it more or less defines the atmosphere of that given part of the recording. Being the most clear sound in the recording, the different bird sounds thus rightly so seek out the centre of attention, and when abscent, as in the third part of the record, this absence is quite noticeable; even more so thanks to the annoying sounds of insects that own those few minutes of the “Habitat”.
“Habitat” is not so much a guided path of field recordings, but a path through the sonorities of birds. The intro and outro of the record could have been cut shorter or dropped all together, but all in all the sounds of the Finnish forests during spring time is a most refreshing theme that Lasse-Marc Riek does well in capturing. Even the annoying sound of the hover flies.
RBD | Bad Alchemy Magazin
Der 1975 in Bad Segeberg geborene Phonograph, Bioakustiker und Materialbildner, in BA bekannt als Gruenrekorder, nimmt einen hier mit in die Wälder und an die Seen Finnlands. In Lappajärvi, Alajärvi, Soini, Österö und Björköby belauschte er die Vogelwelt in ihrem natürlichen Habitat, insektendurchbrummt, windumspielt. Auch wenn, oder gerade weil, er die Klanglandschaften im Heimstudio noch sanft nachbearbeitet, mit sirrendem Gedröhn etwa oder ausgedehnter Stille, ist Landschaft nie etwas, dem man von Außen gegenübersteht, kein Gegenstand. Aber auch keine entmenschte Idylle, Rieks Gastgeber gibt Anweisungen, wie man sich in der Blockhütte zurecht findet, Holz wird beigeschafft, Eimer mit Wasser gefüllt, das Feuer knistert. Man ist mittendrin und Riek gibt dem ringsum hörbar Lebendigen genaue Namen: Bachstelze, Goldammer, Rotkehlchen, Laubsänger, Singdrossel, Schwebfliege, Kiefer, Silbermöve, Samt- und Stockente… Dazu lappt und rumort die Brandung, knarrt und gluckert der Landungssteg, lacht die Möve, singt der Schwan, finkt ein Buch. Mich erinnert das an die Dan-Gibson-Reihe Solitudes – Environmental Sound Experiences: Listen to the Loons… Seascapes… Night on Wilderness Lake. Warum aber nicht selber Spazierenhören? An unguten Tagen macht mich der Soylent Green-Beigeschmack derart bloß noch erinnerter Natur nur morbide. Also, Computer aus, raus aus dem Kokon. Jeden Tag stirbt ein Klang und wir werden auch nicht jünger.
[BA 66 rbd]
Guillermo Escudero | Loop
This is the second release on Hungarian label 3Leaves run by Ákos Garai.
Lasse-Marc Riek is a German sound artist who runs the Gruenrekorder label that release many pure field recordings artists and this is the case for “Habitats”, which was recorded in Finland in Spring of 2007 and also electronically manipulated.
The CD also contains a slideshow video based on photographs by Anne-Berit Riek, mainly with a variety of birds, and on the inside cover Lasse-Marc Riek did an accurate description of the different birds which are recorded.
The field recordings took place in different spaces like in the forest (recorded far and close from it) where there are a wide range of bird’s songs and flies and as a backdrop, a drone.
A close recording taken in the forest recording water, birds, and then in a lake we can hear gulls, and all kinds of birds and also the sound of streams of water.
There is a brief passage of some bow object sounds that I can’t identify to continue with lake recordings and from the coast with the songs of the gulls and swans.
The fine work of this sound artist here captures the essence of nature that often we barely listening to it.