1002 Lasse-Marc Riek:::: Harbour

From Spring 1999 to Spring 2007 I made location recordings of microsounds from Harbours in Germany and Finland. A lot of various gangways, tunnels, bridges, ships, boats, ferries, floating docks and coastal birds are making abstract sounds. They where modulated from wind, water and machines. This field reseach was listening to the self-composition in the area "harbour".
- Lasse-Marc Riek -

1. Björköby, Finnland
2. Wismar, Germany
3. Hamburg, Germany
4. Hamburg, Germany
5. Hamburg, Germany (excerpt, vbr mp3)
6. Hamburg, Germany
7. Hamburg, Germany
8. Österö, Finnland

Unprocessed Field Recordings 1999-2007, Germany and Finland.

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
30 minutes+
Release date: July 2010
12 Euros + shipping order

Line note:
Imagine an incredibly large hall. Its walls are brick built and covered with some sort on lichen. Many of its stone have already started to crumble. The huge space might have witnessed a cotton mill. Anyway, the former industrial site has disappeared. Instead of an majestic void an empty space like this would usually create storage racks have been put into the hall almost touching the cover. Besides, every inch of the solid steel shelves is occupied by folders. Thick like those files from the law series. Compact as they wait on their shelves all of them are closed in storeys high as an apartment block. Impossible to look inside of them, though every single sheet of paper must be covered with signs and letters, symbols and tables from either side. Billions and billions of pages and of characters. What will you hear when you walk the aisles between the storage racks? Between the steel racks, bricks, folders, pages and a cover that lies so high above that it is impossible to figure out what it is made of. Will you hear how the bricks go on crumbling when time passes by? Would the steel groan under its heavy burden and when the draughty air sucked the humidity from the documents? Could you listen to what is inside the folders themselves? Their history, their sad and funny stories, the undoubted truth in and by them? Now, what do you hear when you walk on a dock?
Stefan Militzer

Related resources:
Musically connected
murmer :::: frame work 1 - 4
Eric Cordier: Osorezan

Geographically connected
Sabine Ercklentz / Andrea Neumann: LAlienation

Review(s):
The Field Reporter
Harbors are locations where we can find beautiful incidental sonorities and narratives. The constant movement, the quietness, the friction and the materials, the rust, the textures; the sounds we hear, the sounds we don’t hear; the sea, the wind. All of these conjuring factors that Lasse Marc Riek managed to capture in some really powerful and spontaneous way, creating a sense of temporality and materiality that builds up into a very strong experience.
From the liner notes they are two parts that I’d like to point out:
“From Spring 1999 to Spring 2007 I made location recordings of microsounds from Harbors in Germany and Finland”
The sonorities on this work reveal that the captures where done with different methods producing different senses of scale and environment. The use of certain and different microphones can create sounds otherwise impossible: seems like the small have been amplified in different directions opening a door to a new world, to an unbelievable and yet very real-like experience of sound.
“…gangways, tunnels, bridges, ships, boats, ferries, floating docks and coastal birds are making abstract sounds. They where modulated from wind, water and machines. This field research was listening to the self-composition in the area…”
Seems like the artist didn’t manipulate any situations which adds to the work a certain rigor that is highly welcomed: he is not interacting with reality in a way other than with his presence. It’s quite profound and mysterious that “mindful” compositions arise from the random patterns drawn by the different conditions at a certain place and at a certain time.
There is a subtle and yet noticeable ”orchestral” sense at some points of the release, and this is very visible through the piece “Hamburg, Germany”. This piece seems to emphasize and show awareness of this issue. The other pieces have a more raw and environmental character which results in a beautifully depicted lapse of time, very slow, very unique and full of motion and rhythm.
‘Harbour’ is new for me although it was published in 2010; retrospectively this is one of the very interesting releases released that year. Its crudeness and spontaneity makes it a work that offers a very specific and perfectly built universe of sound.
-John McEnroe-

Neural
This project brings together abstract sounds recorded on the street near bridges, tunnels, railways, and other "audio catches" that have connections with ships, boats, docks and a wide range of other objects moved by water. From the spring of 1999 to 2007 Lasse Marc Riek diligently developed the Harbour project, moving from Hamburg to other German cities before ending up in Finland. The field recordings are left completely raw and unprocessed and have been given a well-organized structure that artfully keeps each "scene" from becoming exasperated, even in the subsequent iterations, which are implicit in the case of the "natural" repeating some of the environmental sequences. A multitude of noises finally come together to define the ideas that are then articulated in a rather "uniform" way, though this does not mean that the final result lacks variety and shape. Everything evolves for the best and the artist's ability to tell stories of commonplace yet sublime urban play is a winner.

Suoni astratti, registrati per strada, in prossimità di ponti, tunnel, ferrovie; e poi altre "catture auditive", che hanno a che fare con navi, barche, pontili, oggetti mossi dall'acqua e situazioni delle più disparate che con questo elemento hanno a che fare. Lasse Marc Riek dalla primavera del 1999 a quella del 2007 ha diligentemente portato avanti il progetto Harbour, muovendosi da Amburgo, prima in altre città in Germania e poi in Finlandia. Le field recording in questione sono lasciate assolutamente grezze, non processate, incastrate in una struttura ben organizzata e dalla successione abbastanza netta, mantenendo ad arte ogni singola "scena" in maniera mai esasperata, pur nelle iterazioni conseguenti, che sono implicite nel caso del ripetersi "naturale" di certe sequenze ambientali. Una moltitudine di rumori d'insieme concorre infine nel definire le suggestioni che vengono poi articolate complessivamente in guisa alquanto "omogenea": non per questo il risultato ultimo sembra mancare per varietà e forme. Tutto evolve al meglio e la percezione dell'artista nel raccontare storie urbane d'ordinario ma sublime ascolto s'impone come vincente.
- Aurelio Cianciotta -

The Sound Projector
Harbour (HERBAL INTERNATIONAL 1002) is a nice one I’ve had in the box since July 2010. Lasse-Marc Riek is a German field-recordist and for this collection he hied himself down to the waterfront to pick up certain sonic impressions of steel hulks floating in the brine. He did it in Germany and Finland, concentrating largely on the creaking and clanking of metal, wooden planks and rope, rather than the bustling life of a harbour packed with burly matelots. Unlike our Portuguese pals above, Riek is proud of the fact that his field recordings are completely “unprocessed”, and he serves them up as fresh as an offshore breeze.
- Ed Pinsent -

Vital Weekly
Somewhere between 1999 and 2007 Lasse-Marc Riek recorded sounds in harbors: Finland's Bjorkoby and Ostero and in Germany in Wismar and Hamburg. Presented here as seven individual pieces of sound. Unprocessed field recordings. Thirty-two minutes in total. As much as I dislike sailing, I like the sound of harbors, the smell of the sea, the wind. With today's summer rain and wind I could close my eyes and imagine to be in a harbour - at least for thirty two minutes. Riek, also the owner of the Gruenrekorder label, recorded some excellent sounds in these various harbors. Rusty metal, moved by the irregularities of the sea, seagulls, and objects moved by water (like rubber objects, tires or some such) and curiously also a steam engine. Each piece is kept short and to the point, a precise edit out of a larger reality. Almost song like in structure. If pure, unprocessed field recordings are your cup of tea, then this release by Lasse-Marc Riek is an excellent example of what it is. If you are new to the genre, this is a great way to step inside.
- Frans de Waard -

Sonomu
Lasse-Marc Riek is a Finnish field recordist who pursues his interest in "bio-acoustics" alone and in concert with scientists, ecologists and musicians. He maintains an archive of wildly disparate location recordings ranging from sleddogs in empty, northern Finland to crowds of soccer fans at the 2006 World Cup in Germany: http://www.lasse-marc-riek.de/fieldreports/
Between the springs of 1999 and 2007, he compiled a series of location recordings at four different harbours, two each in Finland and Germany. They are presented entirely untreated, since the sound of gangways and docks, ships and coastal birds was for him an act of self-composition.
You can certainly obtain the same experience, dozens of time over in fact, by visiting his website. However, acquiring this release on Goh Lee Kwang´s excellent Malaysian label, aside from encouraging the spread of experimental music, gains you a many-sided work of art which includes stellar graphic design by Tobias Schmitt, and a somewhat hermetic text by Stefan Militzer which ends with the musical question, ”Now, what do you hear when you walk on a dock?”
The sound of its condition and history, the sound of man´s attempts to mediate between sea and shore, of the same sea lapping at the shores of Finland and Germany as heard from different latitudes.
It is also our most temporal zone - in a world of impermanence, nothing changes more than the places where water meets land.
It can hardly be called pretty, aside from the opening and closing tracks, especially the latter with its choir of seagulls. But it transports the listener so immediately and convincingly that you would swear you can smell the salt in the air.
- Stephen Fruitman -

Monsieur Delire
Mon premier contact avec cet artiste sonore. Harbour propose des enregistrements de terrain non retraités. Il y a là une palette sonore large, très métallique comme il se doit (un port et ses conteneurs, après tout). Mais surtout, cette série de courtes pièces (formant un court disque de 32 minutes) bouge beaucoup, elle sont très actives. Et un enregistrement de qualité, qui offre donc une écoute courte mais soutenue. Facile de faire rejouer immédiatement.

My first contact with this sound artist. Harbour features untreated field recordings. The sound palette is wide, though very metallic (lots of containers in a harbour, not to mention the ships). But most of all, this collection of short pieces (making up a short record, 32 minutes) has a lot happening. These tracks are very active. And a quality recording. A short listen that sustained my interest throughout. Pressing “Play” again is a no-brainer.
- François Couture -

Blow Up
Come già il titolo lascia chiaramente intendere, “Harbour” è frutto delle registrazioni effettuate dall’artista multimediale Lasse Marc Riek in alcuni porti della Germania e della Finlandia. L’elemento di maggior interesse del lavoro consiste nel fatto che tutte le field recordings contenute in questo lavoro non hanno subito alcun trattamento né tantomeno sono state assemblate in forma di composizione concretista. Sono semplicemente riportate nude e crude su supporto digitale, a testimonianza della loro sorprendente e spettrale musicalità, quasi fossero istantanee sonore destinate all’album dei ricordi. (6/7)
- Massimiliano Busti -

The Watchful Ear
Its one of Brian’s often returned to questions I know, and so I feel slightly conscious asking it again here, but why is it exactly that we each connect with field recordings differently, and some work for us while others don’t? Is the notion of personal familiarity important here? Do we need to know sounds personally to connect with them? I don’t think this is necessarily the case, though it might help. I grew up around railways, and their sounds have an important place in my childhood. So if someone released a CD of freight wagons being pushed around a goods yard, or the familiar rumble of old diesel locomotives late at night I would probably be very taken with it. Recordings made at harbours though, despite my recent enjoyment of such places, may not connect in the same way. Perhaps that could be one reason why I find Harbour, a new disc by Lasse Marc Riek of untreated field recordings made indeed at harbours to be missing some key ingredient.

I should state early on here that there is nothing particularly wrong or uninteresting about the eight pieces included on this CD, which is a new release on the Herbal International label, just that somehow, in some way they pass me by without really making any impact, without giving me a sense of place, or leading me to wonder where sounds come from. Actually, after returning home from work this evening somewhat tired and in a bad mood, I put on Harbour without really giving any thought to the music’s origins, without reading the sleevenotes, or even really comprehending that what I was about to hear was field recordings. It did strike me very quickly after pressing play that what I was hearing was unprocessed field recording, but the exact nature of what I was hearing was not immediately obvious. The opening tracks, full of scraping and groaning sounds recorded in vaguely large spaces did not say harbour to me, rather just ageing industrialised sounds of one kind or another. It wasn’t until track four (my favourite of the pieces here) where odd, closely miked creaks are almost drowned out by the sound of ship’s horns and whistles that any relationship to the sea was evident to me.

Riek certainly seems to have worked hard to find the recordings that make up this album. He recorded at ports in Finland, Germany and Austria, and in places, such as throughout the sixth piece, where constant groaning wails of differing pitches seem to form slow rhythms as gentle water lapping drifts past, he has managed to find inherently musical sounds to record, suggesting a lot of hours spent seeking out the recordings that appear here. Track six sounds a little like an Eddie Prevost bowed cymbal solo played with heavy wooden instruments while floating down the river…

Despite the degree of invention that has gone into the composition of this album, and the original nature of the recordings (are there any other albums of harbour sounds out there?) I have to say that I struggle to be pulled into the music. Maybe the sounds are just a little too abstract, a little too non-representative so that they don’t place me anywhere other than right here listening to a CD of unusual sounds. The final track of the album is full of seabirds calling and flies buzzing and I immediately think of the coast, I immediately feel a sense of place in the music that was missing from the first seven pieces. On this closing track though, the references are very obvious, as if Riek has swung the mood completely in the other direction, away from finding hidden beauty in the sounds of the harbours and instead just showcasing familiar elements.

So these pieces have been well recorded, carefully researched and neatly chosen, portraying both the familiar sounds of a harbour and the hidden secrets that play their own private music, but somehow, for some reason nothing here has really jumped out at me as remarkable, nothing has sounded gone anywhere I didn’t think it would go, and crucially nothing has evoked any images of familiar or invented places in my head. I just don’t know why this is. On Monday I was really taken by David Papapostolou’s field recordings of pretty much nothing extraordinary, but here, presented by clear recordings of carefully selected sounds partly driven by natural maritime phenomena I don’t feel inspired. Maybe my own tiredness has an impact on my ability to listen creatrively, and on another day I would find a lot more to grab me in Harbour, but I suspect not for some reason. I can’t answer Brian’s question satisfactorily, and maybe none of us can, but perhaps that is where some of my interest in field recordings comes from, this uncertainty over what appeals and what doesn’t. It also seems to affect each of us differently, which is why my thoughts on this CD should be taken as individual to me alone, and that each listener will likely respond very differently.

One thing about the release- while the six panel digipack is externally wrapped in a slightly disappointing series of pastel shaded rectangles overlaid by large type, the inside of the packaging features a great image made up (I think) of a close up photo of multicoloured and randomly sized storage boxes piled up on top of each other, perhaps an image found at a harbour, but certainly an attractive piece of design.
- Richard Pinnell -

Just Outside
Probably just coincidence, but I seem to be encountering more and more field recordings containing the quality of insistency lately. Those insectile sound of Thomas Tilly were one recent example and this disc, apparently from docksides around Germany and Scandinavia is another. To be sure, there are subtler sounds in play, but the ones that leap out, here, are the brutal groans occasioned, I think, by the rubbing of large craft against wood pilings, boat whistles and the like. Perhaps we've (or, "I've") drifted along some continuum that's expected field recordings to concentrate on the small and thereby quiet, a needless constriction when you get down to it. Also, these are "unprocessed" which shouldn't pose a problem; were I sitting out on the piers, I'd likely enjoy it as much as the next person. But somehow, playing it back over my stereo, there seems to be a lack, an overtness that negates the sense of mystery one would have in situ and which might be recovered via some kind of creative processing. Hard to say. Or perhaps Riek and I simply have differing tastes with regard to sonic material we find interesting, likely more my problem than his. In any case, I found it tough to really immerse myself here, didn't smell the sea air.
- Brian Olewnick -