Michael Pisaro - Transparent City (Volumes 3 and 4) (EWR 0708/09)
The source materials here are field recordings made in the greater Los Angeles area from October 2006 to February 2007. Just as with the previous sets of 'Transparent City - Volumes 1 and 2', each track consists of ten minutes of material recorded intact at one place with no editing, plus a two-minute silence added at the ending. Sine tones and mixing were added to them at Pisaro’s home studio later. You are supposed to set the same volume to which you listen to music normally through the whole set.
On these two discs, some layers of two or three sine tones are woven into the sound materials in a more expressive way. Here again, sine tones are added at moderate volumes that would never violate the natural flows of the field recording sounds, and blended perfectly in with the entire soundscape. Some of the tracks were set at a little louder volume than previous discs, with some clear noises of car tires squeaking on a wet road, sounds of car horns and calls of a sea gull, which added a little more realistic feeling to the scene. You may feel closer and more intimate to these sounds.
Track 5 of Volume 3 is perhaps the most beautiful piece in the whole series. While the quiet sounds of rain are penetrating the track, soft muffled sounds of airplanes and calls of a sea gull appear once in a while with some intervals. In the middle of the tranquil scene, a duo or a trio of sine tones are softly emerged into the sounds of rain in almost inaudible ways, appearing and disappearing. A delicate balance of the layer of quiet sounds is beautifully achieved.
Volume 4 starts with a track of cozy restaurant noises, accompanied by occasional clicking noises of dishes and pots, in the warm relaxed ambience of people's chats in the room. Some other sounds like school chimes from far away are also audible. In this disc, the volumes of tracks are set in a wider range than previous discs, and the distance between the sounds and the listeners comes closer and further more distinctively. The last track starts with a fairly high volume, then shifts to a lower volume in the last half, as if it brings back the old familiar feeling of 'something is going on far off in the distance' from the beginning of the series again. This transition of volumes is very nice toward the end, where everything is drawn into a complete silence gracefully.
The key of this whole series must be the delicately woven sine tones that go along with the field recording sounds throughout the sets. However different the volumes and the senses of distance are in each track or on each disc, the calm, soothing ambience of sine tones always play a nice role in shifting the entire soundscape to somewhere slightly unrealistic, while connecting all the places together with their solid appearance. Through the composer's entire process - by standing in different places at different occasions, recording the sounds that were happening at the point then, carefully composing each set by mixing the sounds with the right choice of sine tones later, Pisaro created a large-scale ambient music with a sense of 'every place is somewhat connected together', by using invisible strings of the sine tones that can be shared by anyone who listen to the works. This sense of unity ties not just all the recording locations together, but also each listener's environment to the music as well.
