Two years later From The Mouths Of Clay, British sound artist Simon Whetham released new album. Against Nature is out now via Oporto label Crónica Electrònica. Five track reveal the minimal approach and the “abstract” way to build the sound. Full Streaming and information about the album are available below.
Against Nature is Simon Whetham’s third full length release in Crónica, after Mic.Madeira, the 2011 collaboration with Hugo Olim, and the 2013 Never So Alone. He was also involved in several compilation releases, as Crossovers or the more recent Corollaries series.
Simon Whetham has developed a characteristic practice of working with sound recordings as raw materials for composition and performance. These are often environmental sounds captured employing a variety of methods and techniques, in order to reveal discreet or obscured sonic phenomena.
With Against Nature, Whetham explores errors and failures. Although this is by no means a new concept, in this work these were used as part of an organic process in the generation of source materials. Sounds emitted by badly built microphones, over-burdened amplifiers, motors driven by sound impulses, misbehaving software, objects toppling, were all arrived at through sonic investigation — and often as an unexpected result.
Rather than deleting the unexpected outcomes, Whetham found them more interesting to work with than the desired results.
With Against Nature, as with all of Whetham’s work, the material was allowed to dictate its order. The nature of the sounds collected and the way they were collected has led to a more erratic and unpredictable composition than in many of his previous works.
