Program

Together with BJ Nilsen Chris Watson collected field recordings from storm fronts developed across the North Sea and Scandinavia composed and mixed into a sublime experience of the rhythms and music created when the elements combine over land and out to sea. Storm is produced by Touch # Tone 27 and includes an introduction by the artist himself. This wasn’t the first collaboration between the Briton and the Swede (“Wind and Land,” two albums by Nilsens Hazard), but “Storm” is the first album that’s being presented as a joint project. Of several significant storm fronts which developed across the North Sea and Scandinavia during December 2000 the artists from the British label Touch recorded some of these on the Baltic coast for their collaborative cd project based around their mutual interests in the rhythms and music created when the elements combine over land and out to sea. For the next years they gathered recordings on their respective coastlines and islands during the very active weather windows during the autumnal equinox and winter solstice.

The result is a rather unusual favorite record, one that constitutes a radical departure from what is commonly called music. The album consists of three pieces recorded live on the coasts of Great Britain and Sweden over the course of several years between the vernal equinox and the winter solstice and thus at a time when the storms reach their peak intensity. These “field recordings” confirm yet again that the decision about how to align the microphone “to the world” is—just like the one that involves pointing a camera at it—an artistic one. No tempestuous symphony or power-of-nature clichés told for the umpteenth time. The two artists function only as conductors (in the electrical sense) between us and that which we so frequently forget to take notice of—the raging elements or the splashing of water.