Apart from being an ‘ambient-electronic’ music addict, reggae music- and especially dub music – has been playing a major role in my musical life. There is a distinct crossover area between experimental electronic music and experimental dub reggae, as demonstrated by genius artists like Lee Perry and Bill Laswell (among others, of course).
Dub Music, rooted in reggae, is often very experimental music.
I have heard a lot of ‘ambient’ music cross over to different styles, up to the simple fact that there is no clear definition of what ‘ambient’ music is any more.
But to my own surprise I wasn’t really prepared for Marina Rosenfeld‘s approach on her recent ROOM40 release “P.A. / Hard Love“.
Just try to imagine some (fairly radical) sculptural soundscapes with voice-overs by Warrior Queen (Annette Henry), recorded in Kingston, Jamaica. Can you? I couldn’t.
But on the other hand – this may not be as strange as it seems.
Between 2009 and 2001, “New York based composer and conceptualist” Marina Rosenfeld has been developing “an idiosyncratic sound-system, a quasi-sculptural assemblage of customized horns and subs which she called simply P.A. She used the system to reposition resident noise from the sites alongside traces of her own voice.”
For this particular (vinyl) release, Warrior Queen was invited to contribute her vocals, which “acted as catalysts for transformations, propelling the original compositions in new and unexpected directions”.
If, by chance, you are familiar with the previous works of Marina Rosenfeld, such as her 2009 release “Plastic Materials”, this use of (seemingly) improvised vocals over abstract soundscapes may feel like a logical progression. But even then, these sounds definitely kick you off the beaten track, forcing you to redefine any genre-definition you knew before.
Radical sounds, indeed. Just don’t expect to find yourself dancing to it.
MARINA ROSENFELD – NEW YORK/IT’S ALL ABOUT