recently released (and reviewed!): Adam Sonderberg, Page F (C-100)

 

 I am extremely pleased to make available ballastnvp048, Adam Sonderberg: Page F (c-100 cs)

 

 

The two sides of page f, “installation” and “composite,” use personal archival material to explore therapeutic counseling. 

 

Patient / client confidentiality is the utmost concern for counseling professionals, and the sound screen machines placed outside office doors are a ubiquitous feature in many facilities; they help to ensure privacy to those in-session via a veil of white noise. 

 

I consider side 1, “Installation,” the more voyeuristic of the two pieces, “placing” the listener in an approximated waiting room. Adam’s mix of white noise, encroaching incidental environmental sounds, and voices creates a space where privacy issues loom large: what is the difference between hearing and listening? What is the human desire to piece together a satisfactory narrative when that narrative is concealed? What resolution, satisfaction, or insight does one hope to uncover by linking the elements to produce—accurate or otherwise—a narrative?

 

The “Composite” side explores this question further and manipulates the experience more directly: the legibility of the voices is reduced and brought into greater focus through discreet processing; the chorus of white noise aggressively denies disclosure. This side, for me, creates an environment not unlike Z’EV’s uns project where “information,” almost reluctantly, presents itself: the listener must willingly bring engagement to the experience and, at the same time, be comfortable fending for themselves.

 

In his review in Vital Weekly, Frans de Waard noted, The level of conceptology is quite high here, and as such, I retreat to another level. Regardless of the concept, do I like what I hear? Yes, I do, even at the full 100 minutes. Or rather, maybe, because it is so long. Both sides have a tremendous amount of white noise, and somewhere, far away, there are voices. It is as if the microphone is three doors down from the waiting room, and someone made a lot of trouble picking up these sounds, pumped the sound a lot but never bothered to remove unwanted white noise. This is fascinating stuff, so I imagine some people will find this highly annoying. Also, I am unsure if one should play this at a low volume or crank it up high to make the best experience. I kept it on a normal level, did some chores around the house, and found this quite the surreal soundtrack for such tasks.

 

Edition of 21 copies in a white, windowless c100 cassette housed in a hand-typed and stamped outer o-card, an opaque white case, with a hand-typed, signed and numbered j-card, plus two inserts including notes from Joseph Clayton Mills.
$17 ppd in the united states: overseas, please get in touch.