2020-01 Music To Write To (Tiny Portraits)

Ramberget towers over central Hisingen. Like a remnant of something ancient, something that was here before we even started measuring time. As a reminder of everything that came before us, and of all that will continue once we’re gone. Through ages that will soon have forgotten our mere existence, it will remain, silent, unyielding. But there is a promise in that. Something always remains, something that watches over us, something that never forgets.
Keillers Park at Ramberget was inaugurated on October 3rd 1908. In 1912 and 1915, the park was enlarged in a northern and westerly direction. Today it comprises approximately 31 hectares.
Life is short. Humans exist for a moment, only to fall back into darkness once more. But something remains. Some call it the soul. The law of entropy states that energy can never disappear, it can only change from one form to another. And energies have to go somewhere. Keillers Park is a place where energies gather.
On August 22nd 2016 I went up on Ramberget to do some field recordings for this piece. I made recordings on a number of locations, in the park and in connection to the park. When I later listened through the material I discovered recurring noises in some of the takes. High frequency sounds which I did not know the origin of, and could not find any logical explanation for. I had not heard these sounds during the actual sessions, something had disrupted the recordings. Perhaps it was merely radio waves, perhaps the recording equipment just malfunctioned? Perhaps someone is trying to tell us something. I let them become part of the piece.
I don’t believe in the soul and I don’t believe in the afterlife. But I do not believe that death is the end of everything. Death is perhaps just a new beginning. Of what I don’t know.
Dag Rosenqvist, Göteborg, Sweden

Keillers Park - Dag Rosenqvist - Tiny Portraits

In the summer of 2015 I spent two weeks in a small house by the beach in Marušići, Croatia. With a view to the island of Brač and the quarry where our landlord’s grandfather rowed to gather stone when building the house, it was a perfect place for a holiday of relaxation. Recorders were placed outside, around the house, recording more or less continuosly for two weeks, capturing the sea, bathers, birds and wildlife, farmers, workers, an out-of-tune rooster and daily life though a warm and sleepy period of summer. After several days of windless, almost unbelievably hot weather, the weather changed and strong winds ripped across the coast for almost 12 continuous hours. This overnight recording formed the raw material for this composition. The winds changed the sonic signature of this beach paradise completely, making it into a much more poetic scene than the usual sun-drenched beach with cries of children playing in the water, birds and boats. This short piece is an attempt at capturing this poetic. 
Ulf A. S. Holbrook, Oslo, Norway.

Borka (winds) - Ulf A. S. Holbrook - Tiny Portraits

Outside of Memory is a piece comprised of aeolian harp, wind, and a thunderstorm. It was recorded in a single afternoon in Southern Colorado, USA at a place called Sisu, which is private land owned by a family of artists. It’s a unique spot, ringed by four separate Rocky Mountain ranges and with views of the great plains, though the immediate terrain is semi-arid high desert full of cactus, piñon, and juniper. I’ve spent many days over the past half-decade at Sisu, camping, hiking, sitting around a fire, talking, drinking coffee, reading, taking photos, performing, and recording.
 
This piece shares its name with a series of sketches from Sisu by Charles Parson. Many thanks to Chuck and his family for the hospitality and inspiration over the years. I’m happy to have a bit of the place documented and shared in this way. Thanks, too, to Seth Chrisman, who provided an alternate mix and mastering for what became the final draft of this piece.
Cody Yantis, Arvada, Colarado, USA.

Mastered by Seth Chrisman.

Outside Of Memory - Cody Yantis - Tiny Portraits

Every once in a while - during these last few years - I get to stay a few days in Liguria, a region that I love very much, during holidays or times when I do not have to work (I work as a graphic designer in Cremona, the city where I was born and live). Near the house where we stay there is an impressive place called San Fruttuoso Abbey (very close to Camogli and Portofino), which as well as being the residence of the Doria and a catholic Abbey, was also a hideout for pirates!
The place is still reachable only by boat or through a long path in the woods, but I must say that to swim in the sea of that small harbour really worth it!
I visited this place at least three times, and the thing that has always struck me, even more than the beautiful sea, is the atmosphere of the inside of the abbey (I’m not a Christian then is not a religious issue), especially if visited in a season where there are no tourists or bathers outside.
On one of these occasions I had bought the umpteenth music box from a vendor outside the church (since I incorporate them very often within my music I'm always looking for a new one).
Then, once we were on the balconies of the abbey, my oldest (at that time four years old) daughter Viola began to play the music box very slowly and it felt so good that, in the absence of professional equipment, I began to record everything with my iphone.
Once back home I arranged this raw recordings in a sampler and I used that as a starting point for a series of improvisations with the simple aid of looper + ring mod + fuzz pedals.
Nicola Fornasari, Cremona, Italy.
Mastered by Jason Corder.

A Quiet Removal - Xu - Tiny Portraits

From the Tiny Portraits Industrial series.
----------------------
About the piece: 
Originally marshland situated at the mouth of the 
Don River and Lake Ontario, the area became industrialized in the 
late 19th Century. Currently lying mostly abandoned due to the 
area’s large-scale de-industrialization in the mid-80s, the area is 
on the verge of a massive high-tech urban redevelopment scheme 
dubbed the ’Smart City’ project. 
The Port Lands are home to a large variety of boreal waterfowl, 
including cormorants, several species of ducks, geese as well as a 
diverse range of freshwater fish. Most recordings were sourced 
from ships currently being refurbished in the area’s Turning Basin 
complex (including large ‘Laker’ cargo ships, which characterize 
water transport in the Great Lakes region) as well as from the 
massive, derelict Hearn Generating Station complex. ‘Port Lands D’ 
is intended as a sonic portrait of a location in transition – an area 
that exists in the liminal zone between the urban and natural, 
and at the confluence of an rapidly developing metropolitan centre’s 
past, present and future. 
Michael Trommer, Toronto, Canada 
For the Tiny Portraits online map visit: flamingpines.com

Port Lands D - Michael Trommer - Tiny Portraits

A Flaming Pines project:

Tiny Portraits: 

Small renderings of place in memory and sound. 

Sound and place are two terms often thrown together, but what actually connects the two? Sure places sound differently, or may shape the sounds that enter them in particular ways but in what ways is sound actually able to capture and convey place? Is place something to be captured at all? 

In Listening to Noise and Silence, Salomé Voegelin talks of soundscape compositions occupying a site 'between preservation and invention' – an attempt by the composer or field recordist to retain the essence of a site inevitability results via the processes of recording, composition and listening in the creation of somewhere new. 

Tiny Portraits asks each participant to dwell on these connections and disconnections between sound and place, representation and invention by starting somewhere small, somewhere overlooked or obscure, and to interrogate this site using sound. 

In listening to these pieces we ask you to bring only some stillness and imagination, as together we create new places, connections and silences out of these traces of forgotten and hidden sites. 

To visit the Tiny Portraits map by Arash Akbari visit: 
http://www.flamingpines.com/tiny-portraits/

Credits: 
Tiny Portraits is conceived and curated by Kate Carr and is distributed via the record label Flaming Pines. 
Website design and programming by Arash Akbari 
All pieces by listed artists. 
All artwork by Kate Carr 
Mastering by Taylor Deupree at 12k Mastering. 

If you would like to pitch a portrait for this project contact: flaming.pines@gmail.com