Like the cover art suggests, this is a warm, autumnal record – like a breezy September day before the winter chill takes hold. There is a shimmering quality present throughout, and it creates a hypnotizing effect.  Bissonette’s natural ambient architecture appears to be the most prominent feature at first glance, but take a closer listen and Wenngren’s contribution also stands out, although it is a subtle, yet effective presence; both artists operate on different levels. The photography used represents the sounds perfectly: a blurry, bright, and lucid landscape as seen from above, a moment in time captured forever. The record feels like it’s in a continual dream; the ever-shifting nature of the drones feels alive and illuminates a bright brilliance. Only a few in the ambient field can truly reach a depth present here, and many can’t entice as effectively.

The winds of static and the warm seasonal tones reveal an active sound, one that is always progressing – if drone had a fast forward button, it would probably sound like this. Like the landscape from our photograph, the colors and qualities are always changing, if only subtly, and each track has its own unique mood, a snapshot. The contrasts in tone and experimentation help create substantial diversity. “A Deceptive and Distant Howl” sets the tone with a warm drone next to a dusting of crackles, and “Burn Like A Meteor And Leave No Dust”  has powerful winds similar to a tropical storm and the rhythm of ocean waves before it is overwhelmed by static and turns grainy.

One critical aspect that makes this collaboration a success is that both Weengren’s and Bissonette’s individual sounds don’t overshadow one another. The Meridians of Longitude and Parallels of Latitude is a perfect blend of each artist’s take on ambient music. “Their Hunted Expression,” featuring distant, diluted drops of rainfall, makes a lasting impression and acts as an effective closer. While it can’t be said that the listener hasn’t been here before, the quality is high and there are no faults for what it does. An impressive organic depth exists that leaves both artists’ fingerprints firmly present, and it matches the quality of many of their standalone releases. This is as ambient as it gets in its very nature, and it is a gorgeous album that will leave the listener bathed in a warm afterglow, for one moment only – the feeling when the clouds lift and true beauty is revealed. Like the blurry photo, this record is that moment in time.

- James Catchpole

The Silent Ballet

Also see: Two and a Half Questions with Christopher Bissonnette

An Introduction to Instagr/am/bient:

Photos shared with the popular software Instagram are usually square in format, not unlike the cover to a record album. The format leads inevitably to a question: if a given image were the cover to a record album, what would the album’s music sound like?

Instagr/am/bient is a response to that question. The project involves 25 musicians with ambient inclinations. Each of the musicians contributed an Instagram photo, and in turn each of the musicians recorded an original track in response to one of the photos contributed by another of the project’s participants. The tracks are sonic postcards. They are pieces of music whose relative brevity—all are between one and three minutes in length—is designed to correlate with the economical, ephemeral nature of an Instagram photo.

The result of the 25 musicians’ collective efforts is an investigation into the intersection of technology, aesthetics, and artistic process. What parallels exist, for example, between the visual filters that Instagram provides users to transform their photos and the sound-processing tools employed by electronic musicians?

In many cases here, the musicians employ sonic field recordings as source material for their music. In the case of both their photos and their compositions (photography in one case, phonography in the other), documents are altered to emphasize their atmospheric qualities: to eke a modest art out of the everyday.

The full collection is also streaming at soundcloud.com/disquiet.

The 25 MP3s are downloadable for free individually and as a Zip file atarchive.org.

Download a 58-page PDF with full-page reproductions of the images and additional information on all the participating musicians: PDF.

A Disquiet.com Project
Commissioned by Marc Weidenbaum

Design/Boondesign.com
Cover Photo/Brian Scott

boomkat.com

Each of the five tracks in this first collaboration between David Wenngren and Christopher Bissonnette can be heard as a single discrete moment – a single loop around a particle accelerator, or around the earth. The shortest track is more than seven and a half minutes long, yet they each give the impression of the unfurling of a single sound or sonic texture, whether this be a lush, lulling murmur (as in album opener A Deceptive and Distant Howl) or a thunderous surge (Their Hunted Expression). Moments you could crawl into, or get lost in;  the thoughts of a particle as it drifts at almost the speed of light. The focus on a single oscillating drone, with the occasional subtle scattering of more percussive or fleeting sounds, produces a hold or stretching out of time that is perhaps similar to other temporal distortions such as the time of cinema, or of intense encounters with natural phenomena.

Wenngren’s previous work under the Library Tapes and Murralin Lane monikors will be familiar to many, and Bissonnette’s recent album ‘In Between Words’ was released on the Kranky label to much acclaim. On a superficial level “The Meridians of Longitude and Parallels of Latitude” perhaps has more in common with Bissonnette’s aural environments than with the acoustic instrumentation of Library Tapes, but a closer inspection reveals considerations of form and immersive atmosphere that are hallmarks of Wenngren’s approach. The album is released on Home Normal on 28th October, and is rich with the warmth and tactility one has come to expect from the label (and from the mastering talents of Taylor Deupree). Whether a moment is measured in years, miles, or metres per second is ultimately beside the point: with “The Meridians of Longitude and Parallels of Latitude” it is enough just to be in it.

- Nathan Thomas for Fluid Radio

fluid-radio.co.uk

Tracklist:
01 A Deceptive and Distant Howl
02 A Wild Tonic In The Rain
03 In His Ghostly Heart
04 Burn Like A Meteor And Leave No Dust
05 Their Hunted Expression

Release Description from Home Normal:
Whilst most of you will know of our love for David Wenngren (of Library Tapes fame, of course), Christopher Bissonnette’s ‘In Between Words’ release on Kranky has long been a personal favourite around these parts. So when I heard about their collaboration I almost fell over myself with excitement. The result is the beautiful and noisily freckled masterpiece ‘The Meridians of Longitude and Parallels of Latitude’, mastered by the lovely Taylor Deupree. In many ways the record is a perfect hybrid of their sound, almost the truest of collaborations if you will. It is also a true Home Normal release, fitting of our original intentions for release of works. It is of a drone-like nature, yet at once melodic, intense and possessing a naturally organic graininess and warmth we so love. The cover art is a perfect match for the sound: beautiful, serene, yet freckled and blurred like a frosty window pane. The music is that of a dream, a dusty memory of something beautiful, retaining its alluring being in that which is hidden, seen but not fully recognisable. The good thing about this dream, this memory however, is that we simply have to press the ‘play’ button again when it is over.

Ian Hawgood
Home Normal