Neuma Records release composer David Dunn's experimental piece, Verdant. Dunn is probably best known for his interdisciplinary work that crosses the boundaries between art and science. This has included the fields of acoustic ecology, bioacoustics, interspecies communication and scientific sonification while creating a body of innovative sound work that has contributed to projects as diverse as sensory enhancement of healthcare environments and intervention strategies for forest and agricultural pests...

This is the sort of experimental electronic music that would usually send me into orbit on a rant about avant-garde music and how it's mostly for people who are tone deaf and lack imagination (and, probably a human soul). However, David Dunn's Verdant caught me off guard. It's inspiring and riveting stuff.

In Verdant, Dunn has returned to some of his more traditional musical roots to compose an exploration much closer to home: his backyard in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The aural complexity of this urban soundscape is ordinarily masked by layers of ambient city noise but the combination of the Easter Sunday holiday and Covid-19 pandemic shutdown allowed otherwise suppressed sounds to become readily audible. On top of this semi-wild soundscape (recorded at very high resolution), multiple sonic layers have been added that explore and accentuate the unedited ambient recording. Electronic drones and melodies are combined with harmonically rich patterns played by two electric violins. This creates a dense aural fabric interwoven with the prerecorded soundscape as distinct time streams move at different rates but interact with each other through shifting foreground/background dynamics.

It's presented as a single track (1 hr, 18 min, 43 sec) and to be fair once you've heard 30 seconds of it you've heard it all as it's just constantly more of the same. It's composed of electronic beeps and whistles which sound a little like the tones used during a hearing test. There's also a layer of background bird song and every now and then other sounds - the occasional dog bark, random instruments and road sounds, for example.

It's oddly compelling and once you start listening it's almost hypnotic.

8

Nick Smithson