Sara Persico

Sphaîra

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

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Berlin-based Italian sound artist and vocalist Sara Persico heads to Tripoli's abandoned Niemeyer dome on 'Sphaîra', using the building's fabled "whispering effect" to transmute her weightless field recordings, found object improvisations and vocalizations into hallucinogenic ghost traces. Properly trance-inducing bio-digital gear, this is one for fans of Flora Yin-Wong, Emptyset, KMRU or Martyna Basta.

There are plenty of records appearing that bang on about space, but on 'Sphaîra' Persico truly transports us to Lebanon, swirling snapshots of Tripoli's IRL soundscape around her haunted improvisations. She was shocked by the sound of the legendary dome when she first visited the site in 2022, so when she had a chance to return to Lebanon a year later, took along her mics, finagling her way past security into Tripoli's long disused Rachid Karami International Fair. The imposing set of 18 imposing concrete structures was conceived by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in the 1960s, but it was never finished - war broke out during construction, and it's remained empty (but guarded) ever since. And the most impressive of the buildings is the domed Experimental Theatre; intended to be a performance space kitted out with all the mod cons, Niemeyer meticulously designed the architecture to enhance the experience in every way, modeling its acoustics so that even whispered voices could be heard clearly from any part of the room.

Persico managed to spend a few precious uninterrupted hours in the space, and used whatever objects she could find laying around to help create her response to the dome's architecture. Fortuitously, there were huge metal plates hanging from the ceiling, so she was already gifted a set of de-facto instruments, plus, she realized it wasn't just the inside of the room that was sonically dense - the chaotic chatter of nearby Tripoli was exciting the building's impulse response as it seeped in through the decaying walls. That's exactly what we hear on 'Brutal Threshold', as police sirens oscillate underneath Persico's hymnal chants and digitally fragmented metallic scrapes. Persico sounds as if she's singing into a vast chamber, and her layered processes - finished at home in Berlin with the help of engineer and composer Koenraad Ecker - just help to finesse the experience. There's no complete silence here; when the bluster diminishes, we can make out gentle breathing and distant birdsong.

And Persico transforms those seemingly benign twitters into ghostly whispers on the brief 'Blue Box', twisting the pitch as they ping-pong around the space alongside offhand mutterings and Deathprod-like dronal throbs. Occasionally, subtle synthesized tweaks and blips rupture the soundscape, raking through crowd noise and ecclesiastical bellows on the terrifying 'Maze' or dotting across salty coastal winds on 'Domescape'. On 'Voices Organ', a simple melody is played out into the trailing reverb, and Persico joins the building tones with muted, wordless coos you might not even catch on first listen. Similarly, when she introduces bursts of rhythm and acidic digital noise - like on the crunchy, air-lock-ready 'Rashid Karami' - the dome's acoustic properties help give Persico's sci-fi sonics the booming resonance of a Latin mass. 'Kairos' is particularly effective, with the powdery environmental sound - crashing metal plates, evaporating bird noise - sculpted into cryptic, electro-acoustic dub techno.

MP3 Release (11)