fixed/fleeting by Aditya Ryan Bhat
This music comes from my longstanding preoccupation with rivers. The title fixed/fleeting refers to the two timescales on which rivers exist. They flow and change constantly, every moment; but their courses are shaped over thousands of years. It also alludes to a paradox in the music: the electroacoustic part has a ‘fixed’ form, though it consists almost exclusively of random-seeming, ephemeral sounds. The saxophone part strives to manifest this internal contradiction by emphasising instabilities and fragilities in otherwise ‘constant’ sound.
I hesitate to claim authorship for this music. Much of it features hydrophonic recordings of the Birrarung (Yarra), Brahmaputra, Derwent (timtumili minanya), and Melendiz (Uluırmak) Rivers. They are mostly responsible for what you hear. I have just tried to draw the threads together, most importantly the relationship between settler-colonialism and ecological crisis. Rivers are one of the main theatres in which this relationship manifests, for example here in Melbourne's Birrarung, which over the years has been polluted by industry, artificially deepened, and had its course altered.
Part of the commission fee has been contributed to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Aboriginal Corporation for the protection of the river. Where possible, I have tried to tread carefully around the voices of other-than-human contributors. I continue to dwell on musical-political-ecological entanglements.
Tracklist
| 1. | fixed/fleeting | 28:35 |
Credits
Composition/field recording/ percussion: Aditya Ryan Bhat
Saxophones : Justinn Lu.
Recording/mixing : Theo Carbo.
Mastering : Lachlan Carrick.
Cover artwork : Wendy Lin.
Commissioned by New North Music, Narrm/Melbourne (lands of the Wurundjeri people).
Aditya Ryan Bhat is a musician based in Narrm/Melbourne, Australia, where he is active as a percussionist and composer with a penchant for collaboration and chamber music performance. Aditya seeks new ways to bring together varied interests, including avant-garde approaches, jazz, electronics, improvisation, and the Indian musical styles of his heritage; favourite pastimes include scavenging in scrapyards for instruments, recording ambient sounds while on a walk, and trying to bow unlikely objects.
soundcloud.com/aditya-ryan-bhat
syrphe.com
Catalogue number : Sdig022
License
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Syrphe is a platform mostly but not exclusively focused onto experimental, electronic, free improvisation, electroacoustic, sound art, electronica, noise music from Asia and Africa.
Records are published, lectures and sometimes concerts are given, monthly radio shows, news about alternative artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America and my own projects.