Baikal
Ice
by Peter Cusack
ReR Megacorp/Cuneiform
, Thornton Heath Surrey, UK, 2004
CD-ROM, ReR PC2, £11.50
Distributors website: http://www.rermegacorp.com.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be
For over three
decades,
Peter Cusack
has been active in improvised and electronic
music, among others with Steve Beresford
and David Toop in the famous 'Alterations'
group. He also collected sounds and soundings
from all nooks and corners of the earth,
meanwhile giving evidence of his very
enviable degree of sensibility, senseboth
common and artisticand imagination.
Indeed, it is a rare gift for someone
to be able to cross borders, to defy set
rules and to transcend categories without
going to extremes, without showing off
or causing irritation. Cusack has been
doing all this and maybe more without
losing his audience from sight. He doesnt
care to wave his artistic integrity like
a banner on a battlefield because he seems
to know that, when the smoke has risen,
he will be one of those who are still
standing. His recordings have been judiciously
chosen and he has unobtrusively, patiently
and unassumingly applied the highest standards
of self-criticism, showing the many aspects
of his craftsmanship and his intense love
of sound.
Baikal Ice is another example of
Cusack's subtlety and finesse. After making
his first collection of sounds from the
English countryside, the Sahara, and a
London guitar shop on 'Where is the green
parrot?' he set out to record the sound
of the extraordinary Lake Baikal in Siberia.
He took a trip to the lake in April/May
2003, ". . . specifically to record the
ice break up. Although the melting process
takes weeks there are a few days when
the ice finally disappears and the lake
becomes open water again. It is a very
spectacular and moving transformation.
I have not seen natura operating on such
a vast scale before. It was a magnificent
and humbling experience" ("Press
Release").
This album illustrates the sounds of the
ice melting and of the shelves breaking
and creaking. But there are other sounds
as well: a girl bursting into song on
the train, a telephone engineer falling
through the ice, the rumbling of the ferry
and the village children playing with
the local PA system. In other words: you
didn't know Siberia was so beautiful.