Slow Coach

As you might have gathered, I've been a little busy recently preparing for the MA finals - first the research project, and now the final exhibition. To keep you occupied, here's a review of a Thembi Soddell CD that I wrote for Sonic Arts Network, that went out as part of their Diffusion newsletter and was reprinted on the Cajid website.

Thembi Soddell
Instance

Label: Cajid Media

Melbourne-based sound artist Thembi Soddell’s second solo release, Instance, released on Cajid Media, is a forty-one minute work split into seven sections. Formed from field recordings and generated sound, it is described as an interpretation of the artist’s dreams.

It begins in near-silence, and develops into a quiet, but aggressively resonant tone before unexpectedly exploding into loud, intense crackles of dust and noise, and then, before you can really identify what you are listening to, it suddenly returns to distant, low level white noise, gently building into a dissociated texture of distant activity. Half-identified voices penetrate the dark like unrecognisable shadows, and as you strain to locate their source or timbre, brutal industrial sound startles you back into a more detached attention, forcing you into isolation from the humanity of the voices in the distance. Short bursts of layered noise, like hailstones or soil raining on a coffin lid break the growing tension, replaced by jet engines, a rising and maintaining of energy, cut into by drops in sound, like flashes of pure darkness penetrating a terrifying twilight. Twitches of black noise maintain this indefinite sense of shock and awe, of constant repositioning and disorientation, suggesting an uncertainty of perception, as if all this terror is being created inside your own mind.

The thematic here is the interpretation of dreams, articulated through the approach and retreat of threat. Soddell ably maintains a sense of fear and powerlessness by keeping the listener in a constantly shifting position in relation to the developing sounds. Sometimes you are jolted out of your chair by the sudden arrival of a terrifying presence, sometimes its slow approach builds a sustained tension that is only released by its unexpected disappearance. These audio apparitions are always ominous, alienating and fearful.

Soddell’s work with dynamics is extremely accomplished, alternately forcing close attention and then rewarding it with shocking explosions of activity that bring any absent-minded trains of thought right back into a brutal present. This strategy is analogous to the remembering of a dream, the recombining of dreamed events into a comprehensible sequence. The work suggests all the uncertainty of a nightmare recounted, with all its gaps and discontinuities of narrative. The virtue of this for the listener is that it will keep you on edge throughout.

Instance is the soundtrack to a descent into somewhere dark and terrifying, which maintains an atmosphere thick with the threat of unexpected violence. If you follow the instructions on the sleeve, and listen to it LOUD, it might just make you want to leave the lights on at bedtime.

Reviewed by Michael Day
Michael Day is an artist and lecturer based in Cardiff and Sheffield.