Fever Dreams by Kate Carr

“Composed during one of London's endless dark and locked down winters, Fever Dreams is a fantastical, speculative take on high density living. From dark, mouldy rooms, subterranean depths, symbiosis and multi-species entanglements, it cloaks itself in the claustrophobia, excitement and despair of living in a metropolis. It is a work which both celebrates and fears the weeds, spores, vermin and grime of London. The dark fantasies, frustrations, and utopian aspirations of its urban survivors. Frozen plastic bags, cramped living quarters, the kindness of strangers, the desperate unfairness of who gets what and when. Almost getting there but not quite. Being overcome by emotion for no reason. Unexpectedly moved, inexplicably destroyed. The never still, forever unfolding moments which comprise living on top of each other. Sinking and swimming; together/apart.”

- Kate Carr

A smouldering, sunken sound from Kate Carr on her album for Mana, exploring a latent and inward pressure from a mix of field recordings; gongs; underwater reverberations; flickers of static and electricity; found reel-to-reel choral recordings, played forward and backward. The result is a gothic dub and dark ambience that hangs heavily in the air, a narrative of middle spaces and dense environments where noise and muffled secrets bleed through the thin plasterboard from the next room over.

Texturally and emotionally it's a potent mix of insulated hope and gritty reality, holding a microphone to space and sound that the mind might otherwise blot out. Multi-species, metal, organic, and digital, dirty, self-built gathering ground, with towering verticals, deep subterranean depths, and gritty layers of lived-in grime, watery and terrestrial, human and non-human pressed together.

“Probably the most significant field recordist of contemporary urban Britain…” - The Quietus.

Kate Carr’s practice explores the textures and technologies of field recording using movement, objects and experimental recording techniques. She creates intimate, delicate and hybrid soundworlds which emphasise interactions and shared experiences within them.

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