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MENTER, WILL - Always Sound

Format: BOOK / 3 x CD Label & Cat.Number: ReR Megacorp ALWAYS SOUND Release Year: 2013 Note: 200 page book of photographs, texts and documents, all full colour, along with 3 CDs presenting the great "land art" of British (sound) artist PHIL MENTER, who uses natural elements like wood, slate, stone, water, etc.. for his huge (often outdoor) installations, sound sculptures and (dance) performances...very beautiful, highly recommended ! Price (incl. 19% VAT): €30.00 More Info 200pp Book with 3 Audio CDs. ALWAYS SOUND A 200 page book of photographs, texts and documents, including three CDs, drawn from the soundworks, but recomposed as three related but internally coherent compositions. WILL MENTER A contemporary of Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy, Menter is one of a handful of sound artists with strong links to the land art movement. Now best known for installations that explore the untransformed sounds of natural materials, wood, slate, water, ceramics, stone and air, he also collaborates regularly on cross-platform projects with dancers Aurore Gruel and Mure Natale, and ceramicist Jane Norbury - with whom he has developed many of his sound sculptures and performances since 2000. He came to this work in steps: between 1975 and the early ‘80s, he was a driving force behind the Bristol Musicians’ Co-operative, investigating novel approaches to improvisation and varieties of multimedia collaboration; within a decade, his work had extrapolated to the point at which his music and sculpture had become inextricably entwined. Intermediate projects included Cân Y Graig (Slate Voices) which explored the world of slate, and the quarries of North Wales (also featuring the first extensive use of his slate marimbas); and Strong Winds and Soft Earth Landings for which he worked with a group of Zimbabwean artists, extrapolating the sounds and principles of the mbira. In 1998 he relocated to France, where he still lives and works. Between 2000 and 2003 he released a series of four solo CDs, mixing the sounds of his sculptures with environmental recordings and musical performances; his fifth CD, Song Sculptures (2004) was a suite of songs written for Sianed Jones, arranged for eight sculptures, percussion and contrabass; and a sixth accompanied his book, Bits of Wood, published in 2007. “The book part of Always Sound brings together my work of the last ten years in a way that examines the unifying ideas and motivating forces as well as the nuts and bolts of individual projects and installations. The accompanying CDs have been assembled from in situ recordings of my installations and sculptures, musical performances, studio edits of live recordings and the sounds of nature. Each is realised as an integrated whole in which the sequence of pieces is as important as the content of each individual piece, and each has an elemental theme: CD1 - Land Sea Air; CD2 - Night Day and CD3 - Gravity Breath. Working across different art forms has come naturally to me and I don’t see it as a big thing. Nevertheless, I do sometimes forget how habit- and discipline-based our appreciation of art is. Without thinking about it, we listen to music and natural sounds differently, finding them beautiful in different ways. But sometimes it’s interesting to listen to music as if it were natural sound and natural sound as if it were music. We can find and then feed different areas of ourselves that way, if we have the patience”. [label info] www.rermegacorp.com