Wasser
This track is performed through the digital replication of the acoustic of the 19th century Grosser Wasserspeicher (large water reservoir) in the Prenzlauer Berg area of what was East Berlin. The resonance of the reservoir, with an incredible reverberation lasting longer than 20 seconds, was recreated live by sound artist Matt Rogalsky, using impulse responses from the Grosser Wasserspeicher which he gathered during a Berlin residency.
In late August, I drove north then east from Toronto. Matt Rogalsky had invited me to visit a small church on Wolfe Island, to record the continuum of voice and cello improvisations I had been circling around. It was a 3 hour drive to Wolfe with a 4 hour detour north, as my young daughter asked me to bring her along. After a brief star gazing moment in the woods, we said goodbye to my daughter’s father, then veered south east in the dark. Arriving in Kingston at dawn we slept for one hour in an old house on the shore of Lake Ontario. Then we took a short ferry ride across to Wolfe Island. Matt set up loudspeakers and microphones in the small sunlit church. It was hot. My daughter read comics lying down in the backseat of the car, parked in the shade. Various tradesmen would come and go with paint and ladders. At one point on the recording you can hear the car door slam and the workmen address the ladder. Matt placed two mics outside the church in the garden. Cicadas and birds came into the soundfield as I improvised by heart two parallel streams of voice and cello.
Recorded, mixed and mastered Matt Rogalsky / Memory Device. This is one track from a full album of improvisations recorded on Wolfe Island, performed within the acoustics of various spaces and instruments. The album is in production and will have a new limited release in 2020.