Latitudes - September 2016 is the first release in my Latitudes series. The album was released on Silken Tofu. The album is a recording of a concert I did in Q-O2, organised by the Moacrealsloa radio show in September 2016. Latitudes is a project where I combine field recordings and sounds from all over the world in soundscapes, compositions and installations. For this release, the bulk of the recordings came from Iceland and South Africa.
Latitudes - September 2016 is cd in a custom A5 cover. A limited edition of 149 copies. You can buy a copy from the website of Silken Tofu or buy a digital copy from Bandcamp.
Stijn Demeulenaere is not only a gifted sound artist. (...) His debut shows his inventive skills, manipulating only field recordings, in an intriguing set of a little under 25 minutes. He creates a kind of hearplay, where nature sounds, crisps, whispers and sounds of our surroundings are moulded together into a captivating whole. Near the end, Demeulenaere widens his palate, using loops and previous elements of the sound into a sort of rhythm. (...) A successful debut. (Patrick Bruneel)
(...) ‘Latitudes - September 2016’ is (Stijns) first release, and it is a registration of a concert at Brussels’ Q-O2, and it uses only field recordings, from his trips to South Africa, Iceland and The Netherlands (...), in this piece, just under twenty-four minutes. (...) If I understand well there is not really a narrative Demeulenaere is telling his listeners, but more or less puts together sounds from all over the world, choosing and selecting together what he thinks fits best together. There is, so it seems to me, a love for sounds that involve water. In the opening sequence this sounds like the sound of rowing, along with birds, insects and from there on he expands further into wildlife. It is hard, or perhaps for me impossible, to tell what it is that he’s doing with these sounds, if anything at all that is. This might be a work of pure, untreated sound events stuck together for all I know, but just at the same time it might also be that Demeulenaere creates loops out of his sounds, or uses quite a bit of sound processing. Only towards the end there is definitely loops and processing going as Demeulenaere creates some odd rhythms out of his material, and whatever was the sound originally we no longer know. For much of the rest of this piece we don’t know if that is the case as well. Now, of course, after hearing the whole thing a couple of times, I would think it is the case; everything is some way or another a bit processed and enhanced. Overall I enjoyed this piece quite a bit, (...) Now it’s a fine but short debut, hopefully with the promise of more to come. (FdW)
A total symphony of field recordings...
(...) a captivating head-trip with great spatial resolution...
Something very special.(...) An intriguing soundscape (...)
I’ve been an independent musician for two decades, but the work of Folklore Tapes “Black Dog Traditions of England” really got me interested in field recordings. Came across “Latitudes” in my journey, and am very happy I did. A very deliberate exercise in natural soundscapes that crescendo slowly into a very industrial soundscape. A great blueprint for questing audiophiles.
Count me in on your future journeys near and far!
A dis/location. Looking inward. A longing for something I struggle to define. In-there. Out-there. In-between maybe. I heard ghosts. And some Loas. (voodoo deities; editor's note)
Well done.
The sounds of the release and the release itself were made possible by the help of Wim Pauwels, Frederic Alstadt, Nico Bogaerts, Q-O2, Francisco López, James Webb, Chris Watson , Jez Riley French, Jana Winderen, BJ Nilsen and Jurgen De Blonde. Thank you all. Also thanks to all the participants of the Sonic Mmabolela Residency 2013, the Wildeye Iceland Recording gathering 2015, the Sonic Acts field recording workshop 2016 and the guides at Sonic Mmabolela.