VA - LANDSCAPE FORMATIONS (2020)

The physical nature of sound turns every speaker into a 3D printer. Visions of sound, crafted in digital space, or summoned from the voltage flowing through a synthesizer, or perhaps even read from a magnetized ferrichrome tape, have the ability to then manifest in the air around us, breaching reality with their own forms. Slowly coming together over an extended period, Landscape Formations features six artist/composers from Copenhagen, each contributing lengthy sound works resembling sonambient sculptures or creeping gas leaks, seeping out of speakers and into the atmosphere.

Serving as a reintroduction to Phinery after a two-year hiatus, Landscape Formations is a compilation of tangible beauty, unhurried in its formulation, and sparse with its ideas. Martin Kozak’s ‘hverfa’ is an apt opening track, assembling ten-minutes of soft piano keys and delicate ambient tones shimmering as a still lake beneath a full moon. Both Ragnhild May and Sandra Boss use a variety of tools in their practice, the former here contributing a wispy set of slowly unfurling drones from software-controlled flutes that resemble the buzzing of sand dunes, while the latter de- and reconstructs tones derived from erased cassettes, utilizing worn out tape machines to re-filter and re-record vacant sonic spaces into glitch-scapes of overtones and long-distant sonic remnants.

The mysterious Yuri and Grøn each summon diffuse sound environments that sedately evolve virtual sounds in otherworldly patterns inside brightly lit imaginary rooms. The half-hour finale, ‘The Shadows Overlapped And Parted’ by O.V. is a ritualistic and patient emanation of bottomless vaporous tones and languid, leering bass. The compilation gets its name from the striking titular artwork by Copenhagen-based visual artist Rosalina Serup, as featured in the