February 14, 2025

Lawrence English – Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds – “audial steam bath”

ROOM40        31st Jan, 2025

As you might expect from a suite composed for an installation in an art gallery (the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia), this is all about the space and the atmosphere, It’s extended drones, breathy clouds and echoey piano. Lawrence English, the creator, talks about the way sound occupies space and imagines early ancestors in dark cathedral-sized caves. That’s the sort of size of space he conjures up here. Either that, or large hard-surfaced exhibition spaces in a gallery. I’m almost there as I hear this.

Before I had kids and had spare time, I liked to wander new streets or art galleries with a headphone soundtrack of extended deep space music like Jah Wobble’s ‘Largely Live In Hartlepool’ or Miles Davis’ ‘Get Up On It’ or ‘Big Fun’. This has the same sort of function – dream space / thought space – something to help focus instead of being the focus. English describes the intention of offering an atmospheric tint to visitors walking through the building.

Performed by a crew of eleven, the sound is nevertheless of one piece, unified and seamless, thudding, drifting, floating, dreaming, rising and falling, getting intense but still remaining liquid, leaving me in the same place but a little cleansed, like an audial steam bath. The unity of sound is inherent in the composition; “the piece was constructed around two long form sound prompts that each musician responded and contributed to”.

Part of the essence of the piece is that, while buildings change little, day to day, as Lawrence English says: “the people, objects, atmospheres, and encounters that fill them are forever collapsing into memory.”

Dig in and enjoy the texture added to whatever activity you are involved in.

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