MICHAEL BEGG – WITNESS. AMBIENT CHAMBER WORKS 2020-2024
It’s not easy to describe Michael Begg‘s output in a few words. He is a member of Human Greed, Fovea Hex, and the Black Glass Ensemble, and collaborated with artists like Colin Potter, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Chris Connelly. But he also released many solo albums, approaching music from many different angles.
But his music is always “located in the place where formal composition and electronic erosion meet; a liminal space coloured by longing and discomfort”.
His discography includes the Witness series (1-5), created with the Witness Engine software he developed ‘to sonify earth monitoring and environmental data‘: ‘an‘engine’ to consume live data from numerous locations and turn the various elements of the air quality index into sound and audio processes’.
The data sources varied from levels of carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere, to orbital patterns of satellites, live local data from Openweathermap, or receding Arctic ice of collapsing glaciers.
This new release features selections from this Witness Series, but also pieces from Light Water is Black Water, Sounding The Ice Factory, and the forthcoming album Out of Whose Womb Comes the Ice. There are some live recordings and alternative mixes.
The result is an extensive (13 tracks in 80 minutes) overview of Michael Begg‘s versatility. There’s deep ambient music, orchestral neo-classical arrangement (with the Black Glass Ensemble), and more abstract soundscapes.
Witness, Ambient Chamber Works 2020-2024 will be released on CD in a six panel ecopack with full track and production notes – which will hopefully also reveal some information about the relation of the compositions to their original datasets. Release date is May 19, but the album can already be pre-ordered.
RL HUBER – HAFGUFA
There’s not much information about who RL (Ryan) Huber is: he is relatively private about his background, keeping the focus on his music. The only known fact is that he is from Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
His latest album Hafgufa is released without additional information – not even a word about the album title, which is not exactly explanatory.
A quick search learns that Hafgufa (meaning something like ‘sea-steamer’) refers to a legendary sea creature, ‘purported to inhabit Iceland’s waters (Greenland Sea) and southward toward Helluland. Although it was thought to be a sea monster, research suggests that the stories originated from a specialized feeding technique among whales known as trap-feeding’.
Knowing this gives some meaning to the track titles.
Huber has recorded music since 2004, under project names such as Vopat and Olekranon. But his Bandcamp page only presents more recent albums: one from 2023, three from 2024 (Memories Of Falling was my first encounter with his music), and now Hafgufa.
The music on Hafgufa is very cinematic: this could easily have been a soundtrack for a movie. It would be quite a dark and suspenseful – or maybe dystopic – movie. The (twelve) tracks can best be played in a continuous sequence: they slowly build up to some carefully placed climaxes. Most of the music is quiet and atmospheric, perfectly balancing electronics and acoustic (or acoustic-sounding) strings for full effect.
Hafgufa is a digital-only release.