artist: MICHAEL NORTHAM
title: Automnal 2003
catalog number: and/23
release year: 2006
format: CD
status: available
title: Automnal 2003
catalog number: and/23
release year: 2006
format: CD
status: available
Highly indicative of the nomadic life that international sound artist Michael
Northam has come to know over the past 5 or so years, this release
represents a sonic recollection of his life dispersed across a vast geography,
pinpointing three specific locations and moments from his long journey:
- Glacier du Trient, Switzerland / France
- Eagle Creek, Indianapolis
- Ils Grosbois, Montreal
At times, this hypnotic release presents meditative, invigorating, and eerie
translations of places and experiences in ways that only Northam can
poetically convey.
Originally dispersed among friends in 2003 as a limited edition "spontaneous
document" CDR, this work is now re-issued on CD so it can finally be enjoyed
by more people. And deservedly so.
Northam has come to know over the past 5 or so years, this release
represents a sonic recollection of his life dispersed across a vast geography,
pinpointing three specific locations and moments from his long journey:
- Glacier du Trient, Switzerland / France
- Eagle Creek, Indianapolis
- Ils Grosbois, Montreal
At times, this hypnotic release presents meditative, invigorating, and eerie
translations of places and experiences in ways that only Northam can
poetically convey.
Originally dispersed among friends in 2003 as a limited edition "spontaneous
document" CDR, this work is now re-issued on CD so it can finally be enjoyed
by more people. And deservedly so.
REVIEWS
SMALLFISH (AUGUST 2006)
Automnal 2003 is an audio document capturing 3 moments / locations in
time. Glacier Du Trient in Switzerland, Eagle Creek in Indianapolis and Ils
Grosbois in Montreal. The artist travelled and moved studio 13 times in 3
years and these locations formed part of the journey. Initially released as
a limited edition of 50 copies, and/OAR has seem fit to give them a new
life with this beautifully packaged release. The three tracks are deep,
incredibly hypnotic soundscapes that bear comparisons with the works of
Gas, Kenneth Kirschner and, perhaps more pertinently, William Basinski.
There's a deep sense of melody throughout each piece coupled with
background sounds that add a little aural punctuation but essentially it's
all about the ambient tones that are conjured up. A magical selection of
tracks that place and/OAR and Mnortham firmly at the top of the tree as
regard to this form of minimalist music. Quite simply a wonderful release
that's recommended most highly. (Mike Oliver)
Automnal 2003 is an audio document capturing 3 moments / locations in
time. Glacier Du Trient in Switzerland, Eagle Creek in Indianapolis and Ils
Grosbois in Montreal. The artist travelled and moved studio 13 times in 3
years and these locations formed part of the journey. Initially released as
a limited edition of 50 copies, and/OAR has seem fit to give them a new
life with this beautifully packaged release. The three tracks are deep,
incredibly hypnotic soundscapes that bear comparisons with the works of
Gas, Kenneth Kirschner and, perhaps more pertinently, William Basinski.
There's a deep sense of melody throughout each piece coupled with
background sounds that add a little aural punctuation but essentially it's
all about the ambient tones that are conjured up. A magical selection of
tracks that place and/OAR and Mnortham firmly at the top of the tree as
regard to this form of minimalist music. Quite simply a wonderful release
that's recommended most highly. (Mike Oliver)
EARLABS (OCTOBER 2006)
My first (and somehow positive) impression was, that I didn't hear the
expected field-recordings of the stated locations, instead there are
clusters of long lasting tones, gently sweeping in space. I would not call it
a drone-thing, because it is so airy and fragile. Northam carefully adds
some metallic sounds which could be derived from field-recordings but I
cannot say what kind of. Later I recognize the sound of ringing church
bells in the distance. The end of this 32 minutes lasting first track "weave
(glacier test)" is a fine highpass filtered part.
The second and shortest track "creek (at nan´s)" deals with deeper
frequencies than before and again it sounds like field-recordings which I
cannot associate. Under the thick wall of the deep frequencies there are
some short metallic crashes and sizzles. Again Northam blends out with a
highpass filtered version of the sound heard before.
"ils grosbois (montréal)" the last of the three tracks is a very subtle,
gleaming piece. It starts with a field-recording, which could derive from
walking through the woods. Then there are more and more layers of long
lasting bell-like tones, which are falling on me like breaking through sun
rays. Somehow I associate here a very sunny, overwhelming beautiful
place in the woods.
All in all I cannot complain about anything in this release, which is for me
one of the best at and/OAR. It doesn't matter that this recording has been
re-issued after 3 years, as it is a so ageless sonic pleasure.
(Sascha Renner)
My first (and somehow positive) impression was, that I didn't hear the
expected field-recordings of the stated locations, instead there are
clusters of long lasting tones, gently sweeping in space. I would not call it
a drone-thing, because it is so airy and fragile. Northam carefully adds
some metallic sounds which could be derived from field-recordings but I
cannot say what kind of. Later I recognize the sound of ringing church
bells in the distance. The end of this 32 minutes lasting first track "weave
(glacier test)" is a fine highpass filtered part.
The second and shortest track "creek (at nan´s)" deals with deeper
frequencies than before and again it sounds like field-recordings which I
cannot associate. Under the thick wall of the deep frequencies there are
some short metallic crashes and sizzles. Again Northam blends out with a
highpass filtered version of the sound heard before.
"ils grosbois (montréal)" the last of the three tracks is a very subtle,
gleaming piece. It starts with a field-recording, which could derive from
walking through the woods. Then there are more and more layers of long
lasting bell-like tones, which are falling on me like breaking through sun
rays. Somehow I associate here a very sunny, overwhelming beautiful
place in the woods.
All in all I cannot complain about anything in this release, which is for me
one of the best at and/OAR. It doesn't matter that this recording has been
re-issued after 3 years, as it is a so ageless sonic pleasure.
(Sascha Renner)
REMOTE THOUGHTS (OCTOBER 2006)
and/OAR continues to impress me as a label with its varied, original and
extremely high quality release and it’s clear that owner Dale Lloyd takes a
great deal of care over every single release.
As such it’s always a pleasure to hear a new CD from such a quality
imprint and this release from Mnortham is absolutely sublime.
The three tracks that make up the 55 minute CD are audio snapshots of
three different locations in time and reflect the ideas and feelings the
artist had whilst relocating around the globe thirteen times in the just two
years, culminating in his arrival back home in Autumn 2003.
Prepare to be soothed and engaged by the work on offer here as there’s a
tangible sense of difference between the pieces, even though the
approach is roughly the same each time with processing of location
recordings and found sounds forming the main structures.
‘Glacier Du Trient, Switzerland/France’ is a light, breezy, yet discordant
piece that lifts you up with its high end drone sounds and insistent clicks
in the background which force you to pay attention. It’s hard tune it out
and you’ll find yourself listening to it in depth and discovering more and
more resonant frequencies existing than you imagined at first.
‘Eagle Creek, Indianapolis’ has a heavier, more oppressive tone and
bears a similarity at times to some of the work of Wolfgang Voigt under
his Gas moniker. Combined with the sound of cicadas in the background
the organic tone that drives the track forward gives you a palpable sense
of a wide open space inhabited by creatures of the night.
The final piece ‘Ils Grosbois, Montreal’ is the most haunting of the works
here. A mid/high-frequency drone that works with discordant layers
resonates at just the right level to create a sense of dislocation, gradually
adding in subtle static sounds and scratchy, gritty tones into the
background. Again this give the track a real sense of movement, driving
it ever forward.
And it’s this sense of moving and never settling in one place that
permeates the whole CD… a feeling of transience captured for eternity on
a piece of encoded plastic.
That’s the magic of music and it’s certainly where the magic of this CD
comes from.
A delightful, beautiful and very personal piece of work.
and/OAR continues to impress me as a label with its varied, original and
extremely high quality release and it’s clear that owner Dale Lloyd takes a
great deal of care over every single release.
As such it’s always a pleasure to hear a new CD from such a quality
imprint and this release from Mnortham is absolutely sublime.
The three tracks that make up the 55 minute CD are audio snapshots of
three different locations in time and reflect the ideas and feelings the
artist had whilst relocating around the globe thirteen times in the just two
years, culminating in his arrival back home in Autumn 2003.
Prepare to be soothed and engaged by the work on offer here as there’s a
tangible sense of difference between the pieces, even though the
approach is roughly the same each time with processing of location
recordings and found sounds forming the main structures.
‘Glacier Du Trient, Switzerland/France’ is a light, breezy, yet discordant
piece that lifts you up with its high end drone sounds and insistent clicks
in the background which force you to pay attention. It’s hard tune it out
and you’ll find yourself listening to it in depth and discovering more and
more resonant frequencies existing than you imagined at first.
‘Eagle Creek, Indianapolis’ has a heavier, more oppressive tone and
bears a similarity at times to some of the work of Wolfgang Voigt under
his Gas moniker. Combined with the sound of cicadas in the background
the organic tone that drives the track forward gives you a palpable sense
of a wide open space inhabited by creatures of the night.
The final piece ‘Ils Grosbois, Montreal’ is the most haunting of the works
here. A mid/high-frequency drone that works with discordant layers
resonates at just the right level to create a sense of dislocation, gradually
adding in subtle static sounds and scratchy, gritty tones into the
background. Again this give the track a real sense of movement, driving
it ever forward.
And it’s this sense of moving and never settling in one place that
permeates the whole CD… a feeling of transience captured for eternity on
a piece of encoded plastic.
That’s the magic of music and it’s certainly where the magic of this CD
comes from.
A delightful, beautiful and very personal piece of work.
TOUCHING EXTREMES (DECEMBER 2006)
Constantly working on the borders between nature and unconscious,
Michael Northam is one of those artists who is almost impossible not to
appreciate. "Automnal 2003" consists of three long haunting tracks that,
according to the composer, are "taken from three moments/locations"
during the "re-collection of my life dispersed across North America and
Europe" (Northam relocated 13 times between 2001 and 2003; and I
thought that my own four moves in five years were a sort of record...). The
album is full of magnificently sounding faint luminescences, carriers of
barely defined frequencies which contribute to a state of perturbed
serenity. Pseudo-aquatic emissions and environmental subtleties mesh
with what sounds like misshapen aural documentaries of life in a
termitarium; ghostly undulations and uncatchable harmonic constellations
put your head into their huge, yet impalpable hands to caress it until
acceptance becomes mandatory. At the end of the first movement I
seemed to perceive joyously tolling bells, filtered and processed to sound
like they were underwater, but maybe it was just an acoustic mirage. Yet,
I felt such a warmth in my heart at that very moment that I wished it would
never stop. (Massimo Ricci)
Constantly working on the borders between nature and unconscious,
Michael Northam is one of those artists who is almost impossible not to
appreciate. "Automnal 2003" consists of three long haunting tracks that,
according to the composer, are "taken from three moments/locations"
during the "re-collection of my life dispersed across North America and
Europe" (Northam relocated 13 times between 2001 and 2003; and I
thought that my own four moves in five years were a sort of record...). The
album is full of magnificently sounding faint luminescences, carriers of
barely defined frequencies which contribute to a state of perturbed
serenity. Pseudo-aquatic emissions and environmental subtleties mesh
with what sounds like misshapen aural documentaries of life in a
termitarium; ghostly undulations and uncatchable harmonic constellations
put your head into their huge, yet impalpable hands to caress it until
acceptance becomes mandatory. At the end of the first movement I
seemed to perceive joyously tolling bells, filtered and processed to sound
like they were underwater, but maybe it was just an acoustic mirage. Yet,
I felt such a warmth in my heart at that very moment that I wished it would
never stop. (Massimo Ricci)
AQUARIUS RECORDS (APRIL 2007)
As of spring 2007, the nomadic lifestyle of Michael Northam may land the
American born sound artist in New Delhi where he might manage a media
arts facility or he might take up the humble calling of a gardener in the
south of France, where he could find plenty of inspiration for his
ecologically tinged compositions. The excitement, fear, and instability of
not really knowing where housing might come from has been the
existence for Mr. Northam for many years now, and he's always managed
to build an impressively cohesive body of work through composition,
performance, and exhibition. The Automnal 2003 disc was originally a
self-published CD-R which Northam gave to his friends and colleagues as
a testament to the benefits, joys, trials, and failures to his chosen
lifestyle. During the 24 months between August 2001 and the autumn of
2003, Northam picked up and moved his studio 13 times across Europe
and North America; and the three extended tracks on Automnal represent
three particular places along that journey. The first track opens with a
glassy drone of sustained string vibration which sound remarkably like
the more pastoral tones of Phill Niblock. Aquatic rumblings and fluttering
patterns emerge as complementary elements to the Northam's droning
infinitude that aptly fits Northam's geographical subject, a glacier on the
Switzerland / France border. The second track is my favorite piece that
Northam has created to date. With a gaping low-end drone beautifully
stacked with what seem to be choral harmonics built from the
environmental recordings of crickets near a stream, Northam offers a
breathtaking, nocturnal piece of activated ambience much like Zoviet
France's Shadow Thief Of The Sun or Gas' Konigsforst minus the motorik
rhythm, of course. For the finale of Automnal 2003, Northam presents a
sinewy vibrational hypnosis that's quite similar in frequency to the first
track, yet he manages to dislocate the bleary ambience with a
subcutaneous stream of crackle and static. A wonderful record!
As of spring 2007, the nomadic lifestyle of Michael Northam may land the
American born sound artist in New Delhi where he might manage a media
arts facility or he might take up the humble calling of a gardener in the
south of France, where he could find plenty of inspiration for his
ecologically tinged compositions. The excitement, fear, and instability of
not really knowing where housing might come from has been the
existence for Mr. Northam for many years now, and he's always managed
to build an impressively cohesive body of work through composition,
performance, and exhibition. The Automnal 2003 disc was originally a
self-published CD-R which Northam gave to his friends and colleagues as
a testament to the benefits, joys, trials, and failures to his chosen
lifestyle. During the 24 months between August 2001 and the autumn of
2003, Northam picked up and moved his studio 13 times across Europe
and North America; and the three extended tracks on Automnal represent
three particular places along that journey. The first track opens with a
glassy drone of sustained string vibration which sound remarkably like
the more pastoral tones of Phill Niblock. Aquatic rumblings and fluttering
patterns emerge as complementary elements to the Northam's droning
infinitude that aptly fits Northam's geographical subject, a glacier on the
Switzerland / France border. The second track is my favorite piece that
Northam has created to date. With a gaping low-end drone beautifully
stacked with what seem to be choral harmonics built from the
environmental recordings of crickets near a stream, Northam offers a
breathtaking, nocturnal piece of activated ambience much like Zoviet
France's Shadow Thief Of The Sun or Gas' Konigsforst minus the motorik
rhythm, of course. For the finale of Automnal 2003, Northam presents a
sinewy vibrational hypnosis that's quite similar in frequency to the first
track, yet he manages to dislocate the bleary ambience with a
subcutaneous stream of crackle and static. A wonderful record!
E / I (SEPTEMBER 2007)
Automnal 2003 is a testimony of Michael Northam’s nomadic life, which
has seen to it that he relocate thirteen times between the moments
bookending 2001 and 2003. The three extended tracks that surface here
represent three distinct junctures along that journey, a glacier along the
Switzerland/ France border, crickets captured from Eagle Creek in
IIndianapolis, and an assortment of sounds taken from what sounds like a
walk in the woods of Ils Grosbois, Montreal, respectively. With the first
selection, plangent notes and long string resonance evoke both a
peaceful meditation and an underlying restlessness that is indicative of
the work on a whole. Successive pieces, though marked by long
stretches of slowly evolving sounds, are thereby of a more questing
rather than simply soothing disposition. From the beginning, compositions
are texturally sophisticated and diverse in mood, but as the album ages, it
continuously moves away from lengthier passages of slow-moving, more
or less constant sounds, towards pieces that are stringent and rigid.
Along the way, the switching of angles and perspectives are significant
yet ingenuous, dynamic yet immediately involving. Accordingly, pleasure
is had in witnessing so many percolating details get swamped in the low
swelling of the pieces, a certain pleasure in being taken over and giving
into absence. Indeed, the relentlessness of Northam’s approach all but
ensures that one will give in, be it immediately or over a certain period of
time. The final work, for instance, being characterized by intense internal
arguments and clashing directions, encourages quick submission, and
the varying degrees to which this is the case in other works only adds to
the album’s appeal. It’s a venture that the mind enjoys, then, but of which
the body eventually grows tired. A challenge, certainly, yet this document
exhibits an impressive variety of states—both of the garden-variety and
those of a more specific nature—which no doubt colored Northam’s time
over the course of his travels. (Max Schaefer)
Automnal 2003 is a testimony of Michael Northam’s nomadic life, which
has seen to it that he relocate thirteen times between the moments
bookending 2001 and 2003. The three extended tracks that surface here
represent three distinct junctures along that journey, a glacier along the
Switzerland/ France border, crickets captured from Eagle Creek in
IIndianapolis, and an assortment of sounds taken from what sounds like a
walk in the woods of Ils Grosbois, Montreal, respectively. With the first
selection, plangent notes and long string resonance evoke both a
peaceful meditation and an underlying restlessness that is indicative of
the work on a whole. Successive pieces, though marked by long
stretches of slowly evolving sounds, are thereby of a more questing
rather than simply soothing disposition. From the beginning, compositions
are texturally sophisticated and diverse in mood, but as the album ages, it
continuously moves away from lengthier passages of slow-moving, more
or less constant sounds, towards pieces that are stringent and rigid.
Along the way, the switching of angles and perspectives are significant
yet ingenuous, dynamic yet immediately involving. Accordingly, pleasure
is had in witnessing so many percolating details get swamped in the low
swelling of the pieces, a certain pleasure in being taken over and giving
into absence. Indeed, the relentlessness of Northam’s approach all but
ensures that one will give in, be it immediately or over a certain period of
time. The final work, for instance, being characterized by intense internal
arguments and clashing directions, encourages quick submission, and
the varying degrees to which this is the case in other works only adds to
the album’s appeal. It’s a venture that the mind enjoys, then, but of which
the body eventually grows tired. A challenge, certainly, yet this document
exhibits an impressive variety of states—both of the garden-variety and
those of a more specific nature—which no doubt colored Northam’s time
over the course of his travels. (Max Schaefer)
