LAWRENCE ENGLISH - Forced Exposure

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In 1985, Mangaka Yoshihisa Tagami penned Grey. Now, seemingly all but forgotten, it remains historic as it led the vanguard of manga translated and serialized in the west. Approach is Lawrence English's homage to the lasting impression the manga left on him as a 13-year-old. After rediscovering it in 2021, he was struck by how internalized some of the manga's themes had become and was compelled to create a soundtrack as a form of distorted mirror to its pages. What results is an intensely episodic study of Tagami's renderings of the humans, landscapes, and technologies that haunt the speculative world he depicts. Approach is a potent and affective work which acts a distant sonic pyre of a smoldering future that feels acutely more tangible than it did when Tagami first imaged it.

From Lawrence English: "... This album, Approach, is an echo that has travelled with me for 33 years, even if I wasn't fully aware of it. It's a record about memory, about how seemingly cursory encounters shape us and how experiences accumulate in time . . . The record draws its root from Yoshihisa Tagami's seminal manga Grey. In many respects this album is a soundtrack to that manga. What makes Grey unique, in the west at least, is that it was amongst one of the first manga to be translated and distributed outside of Japan (yes, even before the touchstone that is Akira). It was one of the first droplets that has since become a torrent pouring outward from Japan. It was also the first manga I bought for myself, when I was 13, and read as a serial. I tend not to think or speak very much about my teenage years. I had some profound experiences that have carried forward, I forged deep emotional partnerships that carry to this day. The majority of that time however was something of a slog, a day-by-day performance of self-preservation . . . All boys' schools, one of which I attended, are a maleficent prison if you are not participating in, or as was my case you are maintaining an antithetical position to, hegemonic masculinity . . . It's difficult for me to quantify how much cultural consumption happened during my teen years, but I recognize now how formative so many of those exposures have become. An example of this came into sharp focus last year when I happened to remember, and then reread Tagami's Grey. As laconic and occasionally unlikable as the main character, Grey, might have been I associated deeply with their sense of determination. Grey's rejection of societal expectation, and his refusal to accept the immobility of systems, and social codes, clearly resonated with me . . . This record then is also a kind of sonic postcard retrospectively drafted for that very unsteady and volatile version of myself..."

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A note from Lawrence English: "In the summer of 2010 I had the opportunity to visit Antarctica through an invitation extended by the Argentine Antarctic Division. It was nothing short of life-altering, as I am sure anyone would suspect. Upon departing from Buenos Aires for the iced continent the Hercules transport aircraft, under direction of the Argentine military, made a routine stop at an airbase outside Rio Gallegos. What was meant to be a few hours layover turned into several days as, on landing, a strong wind storm blew in unexpectedly. Conditions exceeded expectations, and before long it was clear the transport could not take off. The situation was only compounded by adverse weather along the Antarctic Peninsula. Whilst the scientists and military personnel we were travelling with bunkered down in their quarters, I found myself drawn outside into the howling air. The wind in Patagonia is, well, breathtaking. Literally, there were moments where it was so physical, that it was difficult to catch my breath. Across three days I recorded abandoned buildings, lone trees folded over in fields of tundra-like grasses, quivering road signs, wailing fences and other objects shaken into life by the wind. It wasn't a comfortable experience by any means, but the multiplicity of sounds I was able to capture, I hope, speak for themselves. The Antarctic recordings were made during two blizzards at Marambio and Esperanza bases. During the blizzard in Marambio, the temperature dropped to -40 degrees centigrade (with wind chill) which made recording particularly challenging. The wind battered the base's structures and telecommunications equipment, making a range of unsettling, phasing choral drones and deep low frequency vibrations that resonated inside the base itself. The blizzard at Esperanza was mild by comparison, but still strong enough to coat penguins in layer of snow as they huddled together during the worst of the storm. This year marks the tenth anniversary of completing these compositions and since that time, I have had the pleasure to diffuse them on numerous occasions. With those experiences in mind, as well as the format on which these works are now being made available, I have revisited them and completely remixed and remastered the pieces. Listening back to these recordings I am struck by the sheer physicality of the wind. It's rare that you feel physically reduced by the motion of air, but in both Patagonia and Antarctica that is just how I felt. A small speck of organic dust in a howling storm."

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From Lawrence English: "In late months of 2008, I had the great fortune to spend some weeks in the Amazon. The visit, facilitated through Francisco Lopez's Mamori Artlab residency, remains one of the most deeply affecting experiences I have had . . . Living in Australia, tropical rainforests are not foreign to me. I would even say I am rather at home in them. My family, who lived and worked on the land of the Ngajanji people, had an admiration for, or in the very least a respect of, the rainforest. What makes time spent in the jungles of the Amazon different however is the scale and sheer volume (metaphoric and literal) of the life that inhabits it. Hundreds of thousands of narratives are in play moment to moment, their interactions flow together forming a perpetual cascade of arrival and departure, fertility and decay -- these fundamental states are intrinsically linked and constantly informing one another . . . To listen in the jungle is to listen in close relief -- in every square meter, thousands of insects cry out, their voices reducing the horizon of listening to a matter of centimeters at certain times of the day (and night) . . . The abundance of birds, mammals, beetles, flies, ants and so many other creatures are a source of constant and evolving fascination. In the lakes and rivers too, the hydro-sonic environments are perpetual and effortlessly deep . . . A Mirror Holds The Sky is in some ways an act of acoustic and temporal compression. It is a rendering down of the lived-in moments and environments that became points of intense listenership. If I am to be honest, it has taken me the better part of a decade to know how to approach this archive of materials. I owe a debt of gratitude to Chico Dub at Festival Novas Frequências, who very gently encouraged me to realize a piece for diffusion as part of his program in 2019. That invitation retuned my ears and in the process unlocked a way of approaching the mammoth 50+ hours of recordings I had gathered during my time there. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife Rebecca, who was instrumental in gathering some of these recordings. Her ears reflected an entirely other set of interests than my own and without that, this piece would be substantially less than what it is." 48-page perfect bound book featuring photographs by English, taken on location in the Amazon.

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"Cruel Optimism is a record that considers power (present and absent). It meditates on how power consumes, augments, and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility. . . . This edition owes its title and its origins to the wonderful text of the same name by American theorist Lauren Berlant. . . . In Cruel Optimism, I found a number of critical readings around the issues that have fueled so much of the music I have been making recently. Beyond her keen analysis of the relations of attachment as they pertain to conditions of possibility in the everyday, it was particularly her writing around trauma I found deeply affecting. It was a jumping off point from which a plague of unsettling impressions of suffering, intolerance, and ignorance could be unpacked and utilized as fuel over and above pointless frustration. When I made Wilderness Of Mirrors (RM 460CD/LP, 2014) clouds of unease were overhead. As I have worked through Cruel Optimism, what seemed an unimaginable future just a few years prior, began to present as actual. Over the course of creating the record, we collectively bore witness to a new wave of humanitarian and refugee crisis (captured so succinctly in the photograph of Alan Kurdi's tiny body motionless on the shore), the Black Lives Matter movement, the widespread use of sonic weapons on civilians, increased drone strikes in Waziristan, Syria and elsewhere, and record low numbers of voting around Brexit and the US election cycle, suggesting a wider sense of disillusionment and powerlessness. Acutely for me and other Australians, we've faced dire intolerance concerning race and continued inequalities related to gender and sexuality. The storm has broken and feels utterly visceral. Cruel Optimism is a meditation on these challenges and an encouragement to press forward towards more profound futures. Beyond the motivations forging the record, the process by which this edition was created was unlike many of my other records. Having worked largely alone in recent years, I wanted to shift away from that approach. . . . I count myself exceptionally fortunate to have been able to call on so many fine musicians in the making of this album. . . . I couldn't be more pleased to share Cruel Optimism with you." --Lawrence English, October 2016 Contributions in various forms from: Mats Gustafsson, Mary Rapp, Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, Werner Dafeldecker, Norman Westberg, Brodie McAllister, Australian Voices, Vanessa Tomlinson, Heinz Riegler, and Thor Harris.

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Warehouse find, last copies available of this 2017 LP. "Cruel Optimism is a record that considers power (present and absent). It meditates on how power consumes, augments, and ultimately shapes two subsequent human conditions: obsession and fragility. . . . This edition owes its title and its origins to the wonderful text of the same name by American theorist Lauren Berlant. . . . In Cruel Optimism, I found a number of critical readings around the issues that have fueled so much of the music I have been making recently. Beyond her keen analysis of the relations of attachment as they pertain to conditions of possibility in the everyday, it was particularly her writing around trauma I found deeply affecting. It was a jumping off point from which a plague of unsettling impressions of suffering, intolerance, and ignorance could be unpacked and utilized as fuel over and above pointless frustration. When I made Wilderness Of Mirrors (RM 460CD/LP, 2014) clouds of unease were overhead. As I have worked through Cruel Optimism, what seemed an unimaginable future just a few years prior, began to present as actual. Over the course of creating the record, we collectively bore witness to a new wave of humanitarian and refugee crisis (captured so succinctly in the photograph of Alan Kurdi's tiny body motionless on the shore), the Black Lives Matter movement, the widespread use of sonic weapons on civilians, increased drone strikes in Waziristan, Syria and elsewhere, and record low numbers of voting around Brexit and the US election cycle, suggesting a wider sense of disillusionment and powerlessness. Acutely for me and other Australians, we've faced dire intolerance concerning race and continued inequalities related to gender and sexuality. The storm has broken and feels utterly visceral. Cruel Optimism is a meditation on these challenges and an encouragement to press forward towards more profound futures. Beyond the motivations forging the record, the process by which this edition was created was unlike many of my other records. Having worked largely alone in recent years, I wanted to shift away from that approach. . . . I count myself exceptionally fortunate to have been able to call on so many fine musicians in the making of this album. . . . I couldn't be more pleased to share Cruel Optimism with you." --Lawrence English, October 2016 Contributions in various forms from: Mats Gustafsson, Mary Rapp, Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, Werner Dafeldecker, Norman Westberg, Brodie McAllister, Australian Voices, Vanessa Tomlinson, Heinz Riegler, and Thor Harris.

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LP version. Room40 presents a reissue of Australian sound artist Lawrence English's acclaimed 2011 album The Peregrine, inspired by John Alec Baker's 1967 nature writing classic of the same name. "I first discovered The Peregrine when I was visiting my friend David Toop in London. He had the book on his desk and I picked it up and randomly turned to a page. It was an exquisite description of an Owl silently hunting. I was struck by the detail and evocative sense of listening in the writing. It was as though I was there experiencing that moment through the author's ears. I turned to another page and before I finished that paragraph I was sold. I ordered The Peregrine and was reading it avidly days later. Since that time I have spent a good deal of time with that book and J.A. Baker's only other text The Hill of Summer. I've purchased in excess of 100 copies of The Peregrine, gifting them to fellow musicians and artists who visit and occasionally sending them to people who I felt might relish the book. Most infamously I suppose is my sending the book to Werner Herzog, who I was introduced to by my friend Douglas Quin. Herzog loved the book and now includes it as essential reading in his film school. For me, The Peregrine captures a very special turning point in the 20th century. It marks a recognition of the role humans play in shaping their environment. Without ever addressing the topic directly, Baker's misanthropic, almost nihilistic reading of modern life pinpoints many issues that have come to a head in contemporary society. For a character we never learn very much about, Baker's voyeur of the falcons is a surprisingly engaging figure. As the reader we become him, we live through his textual renderings of time and place. Ultimately, through this ghost of a character, we become the bird in what Herzog so perfectly called a 'quasi-religious transubstantiation' -- reader into author into bird. This book changed my life. So much so that I felt it necessary to make a record about it and find some small way to respond to what is, in my opinion, one of the finest literary outings of the 20th century. I hope you can find some space in which to experience both the book and this record." --Lawrence English, January 2015

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Room40 presents a reissue of Australian sound artist Lawrence English's acclaimed 2011 album The Peregrine, inspired by John Alec Baker's 1967 nature writing classic of the same name. "I first discovered The Peregrine when I was visiting my friend David Toop in London. He had the book on his desk and I picked it up and randomly turned to a page. It was an exquisite description of an Owl silently hunting. I was struck by the detail and evocative sense of listening in the writing. It was as though I was there experiencing that moment through the author's ears. I turned to another page and before I finished that paragraph I was sold. I ordered The Peregrine and was reading it avidly days later. Since that time I have spent a good deal of time with that book and J.A. Baker's only other text The Hill of Summer. I've purchased in excess of 100 copies of The Peregrine, gifting them to fellow musicians and artists who visit and occasionally sending them to people who I felt might relish the book. Most infamously I suppose is my sending the book to Werner Herzog, who I was introduced to by my friend Douglas Quin. Herzog loved the book and now includes it as essential reading in his film school. For me, The Peregrine captures a very special turning point in the 20th century. It marks a recognition of the role humans play in shaping their environment. Without ever addressing the topic directly, Baker's misanthropic, almost nihilistic reading of modern life pinpoints many issues that have come to a head in contemporary society. For a character we never learn very much about, Baker's voyeur of the falcons is a surprisingly engaging figure. As the reader we become him, we live through his textual renderings of time and place. Ultimately, through this ghost of a character, we become the bird in what Herzog so perfectly called a 'quasi-religious transubstantiation' -- reader into author into bird. This book changed my life. So much so that I felt it necessary to make a record about it and find some small way to respond to what is, in my opinion, one of the finest literary outings of the 20th century. I hope you can find some space in which to experience both the book and this record." --Lawrence English, January 2015

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Wilderness of Mirrors is the new album from Lawrence English. This album has been two years in the making and the first album created since the release of his 2011 ode to J.A. Baker's novel, The Peregrine. It is English's most tectonic auditory offering to date, an unrelenting passage of colliding waves of harmony and dynamic live instrumentation. The phrase, "wilderness of mirrors," draws its root from T.S. Eliot's elegant poem "Gerontion." During the Cold War, the phrase became associated with campaigns of miscommunication carried out by opposing state intelligence agencies. Within the context of the record, the phrase acted as a metaphor for a process of iteration that sat at the compositional core of the LP. Buried in each final piece, like an unheard whisper, is a singularity that was slowly reflected back upon itself in a flood of compositional feedback. Erasure through auditory burial. Wilderness of Mirrors also reflects English's interests in extreme dynamics and densities, something evidenced in his live performances of the past half decade. The album's overriding aesthetic of harmonic distortion reveals his ongoing explorations into the potentials of dense sonics. The album is moreover a reflection on the current exploitation of the ideals of the wilderness of mirrors, retuned and refocused from the politics of the state, to the politics of the modern multiplex. The amorphous and entangled nature of the modern world is one where thoughtless information prevails in an environment starved of applied wisdom. Wilderness of Mirrors is a stab at those living spectres (human and otherwise) that haunt our seemingly frail commitments to being humane. "We face constant, unsettled change," English notes, "It's not merely an issue of the changes taking place around us, but the speed at which these changes are occurring. We bear witness to the retraction of a great many social conditions and contracts that have previously assisted us in being more humane than the generations that precede us. We are seeing this ideal of betterment eroded here in Australia and abroad, too. This record is me yelling into what seems to be an ever-growing black abyss. I wonder if my voice will reflect off something?" Wilderness of Mirrors is reflection upon reflection, a pure white-out of absolute aurality. Some lesser-known facts about Lawrence English: he is a lightning strike survivor, he has swum in Antarctic waters (rescuing field recording equipment), he has photographed every bed he has slept in on tour since the early 2000s, he has stood at the site of an atomic blast (obviously not during the explosion), he maintains the Room40 label family, he was once described in concert as "Moses, parting waves," he is a strong advocate for the profundity of listening, and he lives with three humans, a dog and two fine black Australorps.

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"Beautiful new work from Lawrence English. Pressed in an edition of 500 copies. Lawrence English is composer, media artist and curator based in Australia. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English's work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. English utilizes a variety of approaches including live performance and installation to create works that ponder subtle transformations of space and ask audiences to become aware of that which exists at the edge of perception."

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"Recorded in the later half of 2003, this composition that falls just shy of 20 minutes is composed largely of field recordings, the only processing being via eq and pitch shifting. The work is an abstracted impressionist sound portrait, sketching out the isolated soundscapes that exist, for the most part unheard, in these forgotten realms. It highlights the rich and at times unexpectedly synthetic sound world existing in these spaces. Cicadas are matched against 44 gallon drums popping in the morning sun and wire fences resonating to the backdrop of sites such as the haunted imperial hotel in Ravenswood, far northern Australia."