understory by simon whetham

Simon Whethams Understory holds a number of listenings: it is a sense of a travel document, the journey into the Brazilian rainforest, arrival is documented, the vista and inhabitants are revealed and the interaction of the technological is brought to an implicit recognition for the listener. The environmental sense of the music: bringing the Amazon into your room, rendering its life immediate and relevant and contextualising its continued existence as an ethical and moral imperative. The sonic sculpture approach to the nature of the record, the manner of the recording and the concepts of music and the disguise of the wrought within the presentation of the natural. All presented without the guise of the naturalist or rainforest sounds “source’ concepts betraying a simple romantic version of the interaction.

Simon Whetham is in a sense curated by a set of guiding principles, along with a kinship with Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) and to a degree that this album is co-created by the Mamori sound project, run by Francisco Lopez. In this reading the album holds a deep ecology both in a sound sense and in terms of its orientation towards content.

Understory, being that level between the forest floor and the canopy, whether taken as metaphor or direct description, is essentially the attention Simon Whetham draws our ears towards, it will not, to echo the words of Gill Scott Heron, give you sex appeal, but this quiet revolution is definitely alive.

Cyclic Defrost 2009

Repurposing environmental sound, space, found objects and salvaged devices, Simon Whetham presents sonic collages that are both meditative and thought provoking...

simonwhetham.co.uk