Lawrence English - Field Recordings From The Zone '2020

Tracks list

Almost an hour of heart-stopping location recordings made by Lawrence English in
Queensland, Australia in the aftermath of a summer of intense bushfires and just
as the lockdown started to re-shape lives globally earlier this year. These are
technically brilliant and emotionally pregnant recordings from “The
Zone”, a place we find ourselves in right now, where we just might still
have time to reshape the world around us if we pause to acknowledge and address
our own actions.

“Sometimes, we need to stop (everything) if we are going to start to
realise new ways of being in this world. Field Recordings from The Zone is a
contemplation of this proposition. The title is a nod to the speculative fiction
of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; their text a perfect parallel to appreciate the
uncertainties of what may lie ahead. It is also a study of the world in these
moments of radical public action. The work seeks to recognise that to take our
acquired methodologies, knowledge and habituated lives forward without
examination reduces the possible futures that splinter infinitely before us.

We are already in The Zone even if we refuse (or fail) to recognise it. It is a
place that bares marks of familiarity but maintains a restless psychogeography
that can shift without warning. Ecopolitical terraforming becomes ever more
plausible. The unknown (and in some cases the unknowable) haunt this place like
ecstatic spectres, inviting our investigation, our curiosity and ultimately
demanding our intellect. These months have been just a glimpse of the relentless
dynamism that will be our lives going forward into the next millennium. This
dynamism requires radical positions of thought, of generosity, of optimism and
of course, radical listening, as the world’s whispers rise in amplitude.

P.S. (June 2020) And then, it was from this quiet that so many voices rose up in
unison, calling together to work against systematic racism in our respective
countries. If ever a sound could be as beautifully compelling as the quiet, then
surely this harmonised unity is it.

Tracklisting:
01 - Lawrence English - Know Your Exit (6:08)
02 - Lawrence English - The Other Side Of Knowing (7:27)
03 - Lawrence English - The Only Way Out Is In (5:22)
04 - Lawrence English - I Thought I Heard You Call (5:20)
05 - Lawrence English - The Picnic (14:37)

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