With two brilliant albums recently released (Remain and A Static Place), and time spent playing live with Robert Hampson in the reactivated version of Main, Stephan Mathieu has been leaving quite an impact on me this past year, and this live collaboration with Argentina’s Caro Mikalef continues that streak of genius.
Originally commissioned as an audio-visual piece, Radioland works perfectly well on its own as a purely sonic document.Using only a phonoharp, radios, ebows and processing, the result is a slow, developing piece that never seems to stop developing over its 40-plus minute duration.
Between the use of organic sound sources and the live recording (the performance was recorded through Fender amps via microphones), the natural warmth that Mathieu specializes in shines through on here, which is something too many works such as this often lack.
The performance opens with distant rumblings that eventually swell up and then linger, reverberating off in the darkness.Different layers of sound swell up, mostly just sparse tones early on but they echo beautifully, then recede before they have a chance to overstay their welcome.
Throughout the piece, there is a sense of slow movement.It feels less like a single piece and more like a series, intertwined together perfectly, seamlessly flowing from one to the next.The performance alternates between shimmering, tonal passages that extend forever and more dissonant, textural layers of delicate static.Sometimes there are seemingly infinite strings expanding into space, and other times it sounds like a long-lost garbled radio transmission sneaking in.
Glorious, soaring highs alternate with deep, pensive lows that make this an overall darker work than much of Mathieu’s previous recordings, but it still is undeniably his work.Rich tones and hollow metallic reverberations are eventually met with sheets of white noise towards the final third of the piece, changing the direction somewhat and eventually ending things on an even more dissonant, murky note.
Radioland does have a distinctly different feel than Mathieu's other output, which is likely the result of collaborating with Mikalef, as well as the live setting, but it is by no means weaker.Instead it is a different, slightly darker and rawer sounding performance that stands on its own.The way the different tones and textures segue into one another so well, a natural and dynamic feeling has been established throughout that keeps it fascinating from beginning to end.
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