Rhian Sheehan – Standing In Silence
4/10

It is problematic when listening to a CD through a computer when you can hear the computer’s fan better than the music, even when the volume is turned way up. Sheehan’s album reminds of a time when everything took a long time; scribbling words on a page, making music, getting anywhere; communicating. Through its evocative and emotive answering machines-on-parade style bleeps and blips, Parts 01 – 14 (such is the way the songs are titled) are laconic and technologically designed to mirror the stark chemical nature of our modern world. Sheehan sounds like he is expressing the idea of loneliness and frustration in man-made nature through man-made music. His vocal-less slow-moving sketchy techno-dub coasts elegantly through waters of lush blues and idyllic greens like a blue whale on its own course. It’s the biggest thing out there and no one can mess with it; only marvel at its beauty. It’s when the music fades out of your consciousness because its songs are impersonally and solely instrumental orchestrated music that it loses its majestic emotion-swelling grandeur and becomes more like densely layered and thoughtfully constructed elevator music (Parts 4 and 7). Other times it reeks of overly dramatic emotion-wrenching classical music (Parts 8 and 10). Sheehan uses field recordings from his travels around Asia, as well as found objects that he manipulated in his attic studio. Knowledge of this makes the recordings feel more resonant and relevant, for without understanding the production history of Silence it sounds electronically manufactured; the lone insight of a man who maybe distances himself from society, when in fact this is not the case at all. Sheehan is trying to encourage positive change with Standing In Silence, however a tedious and oft-dreary listen it may be. However he should be applauded for releasing this album with a week-long gallery exhibition at the Moving Images Centre (K Rd, Auckland). With the aid of Greenpeace and artist friends Sheehan devised an exhibition where the patron listens to the album through headphones while absorbing other visual arts – a true state of standing in silence. The exhibition took place in late February and showed films of cultures in the midst of change (India, Japan, China), and illustrated industrialisation’s effect on the environment, urban development and our relationship to nature. These films are to be used in upcoming live performances by Sheehan. Buy this album if you like abstract dub/instrumental electronic/field recordings, or if only to help fund Greenpeace’s Climate Change action, for a percentage of profits from album sales go directly to Greenpeace.
Sarah

 

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Album, Reviews
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