Ron Nagorcka

Music From A Tasmanian Forest / Soundscapes From Wilderness

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Boomkat Product Review:

Ron Nagorcka mesmerises on a first edition of two fascinating, fictive field recorded works from 1988/1990 infused with vibrant, imaginative, pythagorean electronics - massive RIYL Chris Watson, Rashad Becker, Laurent Jeanneau, Spencer Clark

Composer, performer, and naturalist Ron Nagorcka moved in 1988 to a remote forest in northern Tasmania, where he built a solar-powered studio to realise his highly personalised responses to the local soundscape. The immersive, self-released (and long sold-out) tapes of ‘Soundscapes From Wilderness’ (1988) and ‘Music From A Tasmanian Forest’ (1990) were the first fruits of his efforts and have since been hailed among “the strangest, most fascinating, most intense field recordings based works and an essential chapter in the history of Australian experimental music.” Invisibilia Recordings (Michèle Bokanowski, Maria Valentina Chirico, Andrea Penso) acknowledge the vital, otherworldly quality of these recordings with a compilation reissue binding those tapes on CD for the first time, with resounding appeal to the keenest followers of field recording-related works as much as anyone rapt to the spirited experimental scene of Melbourne to Tasmania’s north, or even academic-related circles of GRM et al.

Prefaced with Nagorcka’s hope that this music “…will encourage people to discover for themselves the mysterious harmony that is wilderness”, the two mutually explorative pieces invite a deep listening of Tasmania’s unique, ends-of-the-earth ecosystem. His ‘Soundscapes From Wilderness’ is perhaps most distinguished for his duet with birdcalls on ‘Rainforest In N. Tasmania (With Didjeridu)’, coloured with the distinctive if elusive tone of his didjeridu, which appears like a forest spirit in its own right, while electronics surface illusively like a sort of AR overlay almost imperceptibly melded into the scapes, variously shapeshifting from the playfully eerie melody of ‘Liapatyenna (Crescent Honeyeater)’ to just intend cadence of ‘Lemarrcootya (Grey Shrike-thrush)’ and psychedelically warped scenes of ‘Lovregana (Forest)’ that define 1990’s ‘Music from a Tasmanian Forest’. It’s deeply sensurreal stuff certain to light up lesser sparked nooks of the imagination.

CD (7)