LP/DL : f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/turning-porous

As part of the upcoming solo exhibition and publication “on becoming amphibian”, forms of minutiae and Galería Vilaseco present "turning porous", a gathering of amphibious and hydrographic acoustics by field recordist, artist, and forms of minutiae’s co-founder Pablo Diserens.  

Invited to live and work for a two-month period in Galicia, the verdant region of Spain’s northwest, Pablo Diserens spent days and nights inhabiting the region’s freshwaters in the hope of merging with the local amphibian communities. All ears, they adopted a series of listening postures while deploying a range of visual and sound recording techniques. Gradually dissolving in the herpetofauna, Diserens toyed with the boundaries of human experience by engaging in somatic play and perceptual reframing. This resulted in an altered sensing of the present as existence funneled through embodied amphibious realities. The subsequent exhibition and publication “on becoming amphibian” and the album “turning porous” form a body of work that reflects this permeable morphing while inviting listeners into the vulnerable soundscapes of Galicia’s aqueous ecologies. 

Over the course of six tracks, anuran calls, insect stridulations, bat clicks, avian songs, hydroelectric hums, and wind-borne tones occur. Frog recordings and dronesque soundscape compositions alternate, drawing us into the sonic intricacies of the region’s ponds and rivers while hinting at site-specific musics. Closeness is felt throughout, as tracks bear a sense of intimate positioning flirting with physical contact.  

All in all, "turning porous" oozes with the slime and intimacy of Diserens’ listening experience. They write in the adjacent publication: “I’m more frog than human these days”. A shapeshifting that is made audible through the imbrication of field recordings, dronesque forms, and hints of acoustic ecology. By inviting listeners to weave themselves with the fragile amphibian and riparian realities of Galicia, "turning porous" is an invitation to let the world in in a gesture of permeance. A murmur that calls for permeable and porous existence as a way of cohabiting with the critters of the ponds, and beyond.

(more info about each track available on Bandcamp)

LP/DL

pablo diserens — turning porous [fom11]

LP/DL : https://f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/musiques-tourbes

Sound artist, instrument builder and field recordist, Diane Barbé makes their return on forms of minutiae with “musiques tourbes”, a weaving of wetland soundscapes and biomimicking synthesis. 

Concerned with interspecies conjunctions while nurturing the planet as a finite verdant space, Diane Barbé plays with experimental music, listening practices and activism to bring attention to delicate environmental phenomena, that, despite their minute size, translate profoundly the effects of the Anthropocene while celebrating the living. Over the last years, in search of sonic signs in the landscape, Barbé followed murmurs in Europe’s wetlands which lead them to the “musiques tourbes” (French for “bog musics”). Musics made of animal rhythms, blown hums, and electronic simulacra that transport us, listeners, with Barbé into the humid zones of the planetary garden. 

With “musiques tourbes” Diane Barbé offers a peculiar map into the bog. A sonic cartography that matches the tentacular sprawl of drifting algae. As listeners, caught between the organic and the electronic, the real and the imagined, we are left with little choice but to forgo our contours and melt into the surprises of these humid zones. Gifted with new planetary garden perspectives, we may begin to sense a possible world. One where listening practices and technology come together to nurture the collective imaginary in an attempt at resetting our environmental norms and reversing the shifting baseline. Field recording is at the core of “musiques tourbes”, yet what ultimately seeps through is an act of field remembering. 

diane barbé — musiques tourbes [fom13]

CD/DL : https://f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/arctic-summer

2025 was declared the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation by the United Nations, accompanied by the proclamation of March 21st of each year as the World Day for Glaciers starting this year. As they put it, "this is an opportunity to raise global awareness about the critical role of glaciers, snow and ice in the climate system and the hydrological cycle, and the economic, social and environmental impacts of the impending changes in the Earth’s cryosphere." To celebrate this decision forms of minutiae presents a series of albums dedicated to glaciers and the acoustic multiplicity of the ice with field recording works by Marc Namblard, Ludwig Berger, Yoichi Kamimura, Cheryl E. Leonard, and Pablo Diserens. 

Sprinkled throughout the year, the series launches on World Day of Glaciers with the album "arctic summer", a journey across the sonic ecologies of Iceland and Svalbard, by field recordist and nature guide Marc Namblard. 

"arctic summer" and its 12 tracks form a long continuous piece which unfolds in a documentary fashion. Here, Namblard’s pristine recordings invite listeners into the unique estival effervescence of the two polar islands. Scenes follow one another in a delicate but bustling volcanic, animal, and glacial tapestry, whose dimensions materializes through the artist’s play on perspective and space. This meticulous sonic imbrication enables us to eavesdrop both on the vastness and the minute of the cryosphere and the life it fosters. Birds and mammals cadence the album with distinct acoustic behaviors. The air is filled with puffin wing flutters, arctic tern shrills, golden plover sharp pings, kittiwake nasal cries, and the uncanny winnowing sound of common spines. Below, an arctic fox calls in the twilight, a whale spouts off the coast, and walruses growl, grunt, and exhale like washed up steaming engines. Yet these animal voices aren’t sounding alone. They are enveloped by the voices of geologies. Pebble-laden tides lead us to the beating volcanic heart that lies beneath the ground. Geothermal mud pools bubble in viscous drummings, while sulphur vents whistle in perpetual sighs. There are whispers in the slurry. The scorched soil swells. The Earth sizzles. Geyser! This scalding soundscape gradually evaporates into the heat of summer, bringing about the melting of the ice. In doing so, the ice shares a splendid variety both in form and sound. Glaciers crash in thundering calvings, icebergs drift in fizzling growls, while the moraine trickles in curtains of drops. The landscape thaws and leaks. The glaciers thin. The Earth oozes. 

This melting pot of arctic bioacoustics weaves into an imaginary sound walk across the tundra, making Namblard’s profound affection for the environment palpable. His uncompromising compositional delicacy is an invitation to listen to the cryosphere in order to better understand and nurture it. Echoing a cinema for the ears, “arctic summer” thus appears as a time capsule that maps the fragile soundscapes and ecosystems of Iceland and Svalbard, as they face the threats of climate change.

CD/DL

marc namblard — arctic summer [fom14]

2025 was declared the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation by the United Nations, accompanied by the proclamation of March 21st of each year as the World Day for Glaciers starting this year. As they put it, “this is an opportunity to raise global awareness about the critical role of glaciers, snow and ice in the climate system and the hydrological cycle, and the economic, social and environmental impacts of the impending changes in the Earth’s cryosphere.” To celebrate this decision forms of minutiae presents a series of albums dedicated to glaciers and the acoustic multiplicity of the ice with field recording works by Marc Namblard, Ludwig Berger, Yoichi Kamimura, Cheryl E. Leonard, and Pablo Diserens 

Following Marc Namblard’s "arctic summer", the series continues with its second album, "crying glacier", an intimate collaboration between the Vadret da Morteratsch (Morteratsch Glacier) and landscape sound artist and educator Ludwig Berger.   

The album was mainly recorded during the filming of the eponymous film "Crying Glacier", directed by Lutz Stautner (featured above), which documents Ludwig Berger’s recording and listening practice with the Morteratsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps. Much like the documentary, the LP version unveils the profound relationship between the glacier and the listener. Berger spent a decade visiting Morteratsch, so frequently that each time he returned, it felt like he was coming back to someone, not just something. “Like seeing an old friend” he shares in the film’s voice over. This intimacy is made palpable throughout the album. With each track the subtle, yet complex, soundscape of the glacier unfolds in myriads of sonic articulations. The melting ice grunts, growls, bubbles, cracks, breaks, snaps, gushes, trickles, and leaks — all in a splendid and intricate vocabulary. “A form of language” states Berger. Indeed, the abundance of lexicon birthed by the Morteratsch cannot be overstated. The strings of bubbles that the glacier releases as it melts bear not only the Earth’s ancient atmosphere but also a stunning range of expressivity. Bizarre voices materialize in water-filled crevasses, each with their own rhythm and phrasing. Some echo avian songs, some mammal grunts, some human speech, and some even venture into synthesizer mimicry. Throughout the album, these voices accumulate into a thick, multi-layered, glacial noise, as if Berger invited us into the microcosm of the ice. This extreme proximity is only occasionally interrupted by sudden zoom-outs that reveal the arid soundscape of the surrounding valley. “The zone where the glacier has recently melted is like a desert”, alerts Berger, a warning embodied by the album’s last track which imagines the future soundscape of the Morteratsch Valley stripped of its glacier. The elaborate language that once inhabited this land is now gone. In its place the air is filled by bird songs, insect stridulations, and airplane motors, all foreshadowing the possible heat that awaits the Alps.    

“Without climate protection, it is likely that Ludwig Berger’s recordings will outlive alpine glaciers”, warns the film in its last shot, showing the valley overtaken by greenery. It is not exaggerated. The ice carried the planet’s history for millennia yet it is disappearing at an alarming rate. As a response, the album invites listeners to relate to the glacier as a body, filled with life, here gently auscultated by Berger’s hydrophones. With "crying glacier" and its intrinsic more-than-human collaborative nature, Ludwig Berger amplifies the Morteratsch Glacier’s voice to emphasize its personhood, and other glaciers' urgent need for recognition and preservation. 

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — crying glacier [fom15]

• 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗣𝗗𝗙 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗹𝗲𝘁 • 

For its third release, forms of minutiae presents ‘possible moistures’ a non-profit compilation of field recordings and soundscape compositions derived from various aqueous environments and their autochthons. 

This gathering is made of 16 sonic encounters collected by field recordists and sound artists across the world. Artists were invited to submit sounds from marine and aquatic-related events, phenomena, geologies, fauna, flora, geographies, and technologies. From the thawing acoustics of Icelandic and Antarctic glaciers to the non-human voices of Australian wetlands, while meeting sea and river dwellers, the listeners embark on a sonic journey across the globe’s possible moistures. 

All proceeds from this release will be donated to the organisation Atelier Bleu - Centre Permanent d'Initiatives pour l'Environnement de la Côte Provençale to support them in their aim to conserve and protect Posidonia Oceanica seagrass species and to accompany ecological transitions on the Mediterranean coastal lands of the Côte Provençale (France) by encouraging eco-responsible behaviour through education, training and awareness actions. They especially work closely with the region’s youth to raise their environmental awareness by offering workshops and activities to discover the maritime and terrestrial environments: underwater snorkelling trails, guided walks, etc. 

This compilation has been made available to the Atelier Bleu as a resource which they can present to the children as part of their educational workshops. 

> more visual and textual info about each contribution available in the PDF or by clicking on them above. 

> Atelier Bleu: www.cpie-coteprovencale.org  

PDF → texts and pictures by each artist - unless mentioned otherwise
cover picture by stéphane marin 
curated by mathieu bonnafous and pablo diserens 
forms of minutiae — fom03 — 2021

pdf & digital

félix blume — amazonian dolphin

LP/DL:  f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/photosynthetic-beats-utricularia-vulgaris-marais-des-pontins

With 'photosynthetic beats — utricularia vulgaris, marais des pontins', landscape sound artist and educator, Ludwig Berger shares the minute polyrhythms of aquatic plants’ photosynthesis. 

On a too-hot summer day in the Swiss Jura, Ludwig Berger was listening to bog ponds with an underwater microphone. Below the surface, lay swarming tapestries of submerged greenery bathing in sunlight. These were the aqueous cradle of oscillations essential to our world. 

As aquatic plants photosynthesize, they release oxygen bubbles from their stems and leaves. The moment of release creates myriads of extremely short sound pulses, resulting in ever-changing polyrhythms stemming from different parts of the plant. At a particularly high frequency, the pulses become continuous tones. From these sounds, one can deduce if and how strongly the plant is converting CO2 to oxygen. This depends on light and temperature, but is also affected by contaminants, fertilizers or pesticides. 

The two recordings were made in two different ponds, and in both cases the hydrophone was in close proximity to a common bladderwort (Utricularia vulgaris), a carnivorous aquatic plant. While in the first recording the process is left to itself, Berger intervenes in the second by using shadows to regulate the pace of activity. At first accidentally, then intentionally, the interplay of light and shadow triggered the plants to respond with various temporal and tonal shifts. 

To emphasize the microscopic processes and polyrhythms of the plants, these recordings were saturated, equalized and dynamically processed. Yet they remain unedited and unchanged in their temporality. Later on, twelve loops were extracted from the recordings to further highlight the percussive nature of the photosynthetic phenomenon. These loops are featured as locked grooves on the release’s vinyl format. 

The work was created at the residence of "La Dépendance" in St. Imier in July 2022. Thanks to Jan van Oordt and the Collectif du Pont.

record & digital

ludwig berger — photosynthetic beats — utricularia vulgaris, marais des pontins I

"premonitions" by @alenakoroleva [fom10]
CS/DL : f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/premonitions

“Whenever I go, I can't help but notice signs of a looming change. I eavesdrop on conversations of creatures big and small, and like me, they seem uneasy and uncertain about what's to come. Something is in the air, dark clouds gather, winds are shifting course. Amidst the confusion and restlessness, the voices of non-human and human worlds blend in a worrisome symphony. This piece is an ode to anticipation, to the beauty of different forms of life on the brink of the sixth mass extinction. Joining in the chorus are the American toad, northern winds, an old kettle, Mr. Cat, tawny owl, crickets, domestic chickens and pigs, trumpeter swans, honey bees, truck horns, cormorants, seagulls and other elements and critters.” — Alëna Korolëva 

Something is afoot, the Tkaronto/Toronto-based artist and curator, Alëna Korolëva tells us in her new soundscape composition “premonitions”. American toads and water beetles set things in motion before the long-form piece journeys through a multitude of field recordings and non-human voices in a quasi-cinematographic fashion. Korolëva layers and manipulates sounds from the real into a sonic chimaera which mutates concrete ambiances into vaporous surrealities through the modes of collage. A storm blankets the soundscape, things grow quieter. Distant parallels with Luc Ferrari’s "musique anecdotique" come to mind, yet here the piece materializes in an acoustic docu-fiction of some sort, that takes the form of a waking dream. Various scenes, ranging from the mundane to the uncanny, unfold in eardrums exposing an underlying sense of earthly melancholy. A weight lurks throughout while winds, pigs, chickens, and mechanical apparatus weave into a strange agitated tapestry. A kettle whistles, a cat meows – Korolëva sprinkles the gloom with touches of humor and audible senses of home. Trumpeter swans are joined by a trumpeter human; Chayka Chekhov responds to the avian songs in a interspecies dialogue – echoing Jim Nollman’s “Playing Music With Animals”. Environments cascade into a finale droned out by truck horns. Their ringings and animal cries swell in a somber abstraction bearing the weight of a presentiment. “What does the future hold?” we ask ourselves throughout the album as we dissolve in imbrications of positionings, emanating from one another like stacking dolls. Poly-layered, “premonitions” engages in play, in negotiation with the disparate spaces and voices of a troubled world as if it created harmonious discord to decipher the ominous clouds gathering in the horizon.

C30 — limited edition of 60 
duration: 28’56’’ — piece repeats on both sides 
recorded, photographed, and composed by alëna korolëva 
trumpet improvisation by chayka chekhov 
mastered by mathieu bonnafous 
tape production by headless duplicated tapes 
published by forms of minutiae — fom10 — 2024

CS / DL

alëna korolëva — premonitions [fom10]

pablo diserens – mirage in motion

pablo diserens – herpetophonics: arousal

pablo diserens – permeable skin

pablo diserens – herpetophonics: ponderings

pablo diserens – riparian zone

pablo diserens – alytes

diane barbé – le grand jardin de coupigny

diane barbé – les marécageuses

diane barbé – les hululées

diane barbé – les enlisées

diane barbé – le petit jardin de coupigny

CD/DL : f-o-m.bandcamp.com/album/arctic-summer

2025 was declared the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation by the United Nations, accompanied by the proclamation of March 21st of each year as the World Day for Glaciers starting this year. As they put it, "this is an opportunity to raise global awareness about the critical role of glaciers, snow and ice in the climate system and the hydrological cycle, and the economic, social and environmental impacts of the impending changes in the Earth’s cryosphere." To celebrate this decision forms of minutiae presents a series of albums dedicated to glaciers and the acoustic multiplicity of the ice with field recording works by Marc Namblard, Ludwig Berger, Yoichi Kamimura, Cheryl E. Leonard, and Pablo Diserens.

Sprinkled throughout the year, the series launches on World Day of Glaciers with the album "arctic summer", a journey across the sonic ecologies of Iceland and Svalbard, by field recordist and nature guide Marc Namblard.

"arctic summer" and its 12 tracks form a long continuous piece which unfolds in a documentary fashion. Here, Namblard’s pristine recordings invite listeners into the unique estival effervescence of the two polar islands. Scenes follow one another in a delicate but bustling volcanic, animal, and glacial tapestry, whose dimensions materializes through the artist’s play on perspective and space. This meticulous sonic imbrication enables us to eavesdrop both on the vastness and the minute of the cryosphere and the life it fosters. Birds and mammals cadence the album with distinct acoustic behaviors. The air is filled with puffin wing flutters, arctic tern shrills, golden plover sharp pings, kittiwake nasal cries, and the uncanny winnowing sound of common spines. Below, an arctic fox calls in the twilight, a whale spouts off the coast, and walruses growl, grunt, and exhale like washed up steaming engines. Yet these animal voices aren’t sounding alone. They are enveloped by the voices of geologies. Pebble-laden tides lead us to the beating volcanic heart that lies beneath the ground. Geothermal mud pools bubble in viscous drummings, while sulphur vents whistle in perpetual sighs. There are whispers in the slurry. The scorched soil swells. The Earth sizzles. Geyser! This scalding soundscape gradually evaporates into the heat of summer, bringing about the melting of the ice. In doing so, the ice shares a splendid variety both in form and sound. Glaciers crash in thundering calvings, icebergs drift in fizzling growls, while the moraine trickles in curtains of drops. The landscape thaws and leaks. The glaciers thin. The Earth oozes.

This melting pot of arctic bioacoustics weaves into an imaginary sound walk across the tundra, making Namblard’s profound affection for the environment palpable. His uncompromising compositional delicacy is an invitation to listen to the cryosphere in order to better understand and nurture it. Echoing a cinema for the ears, “arctic summer” thus appears as a time capsule that maps the fragile soundscapes and ecosystems of Iceland and Svalbard, as they face the threats of climate change.

marc namblard — off the coast

marc namblard — walruses on a sand beach

marc namblard — moraine

marc namblard — drift and melt

marc namblard — ice waves

marc namblard — calving

marc namblard — commissure

marc namblard — hot springs

marc namblard — tundra

marc namblard — under the cliff

marc namblard — gravel beach

marc namblard — emergence

LP & digital

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — on a different scale

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — the more alive he seems, the more he is dying

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — a kind of person

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — a form of language

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — someone, not something

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — becoming a desert

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — what the valley will sound like

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — hundreds, thousands of years old

ludwig berger & vadret da morteratsch — nothing returns

https://f-o-m.bandcamp.com

publishing platform for sonic ecologies and experimental music.

artists are invited to produce sound topographies that point to specific (or imagined) environments.

co-runned & curated by @pablodiserens & @mathieu-bonnafous

> demos: we encourage submissions by women, trans, non-binary and BIPOC artists.

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