About Simon Whetham

Simon Whetham has been capturing and composing with field recordings since taking part in a research trip to Iceland in 2005. Since then he has been gaining a steadily increasing profile: exhibiting in Iceland; recording in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil; performing at a large number of festivals and events, both nationally and internationally; having work accepted for release by labels Trente Oiseaux, 1000fussler, Mystery Sea, Entr’acte, Install, Lens and Gruenrekorder; commissioned by Creative Labs …

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Reviews:

Best of 2011 Lists:

Audio Gourmet, Collecting Records, Daniel Crokaert, Spiritual Archives

Simon Whetham somehow appeared on my radar about two years ago. Since I have been trying to keep up with his work a bit. And I can say this is really satisfying. Specially when his CD Unheard Prayers dropped in. Not that this is really happy music, as it is totally the opposite, but we will get to that in a bit.

Whetham is a musician whose music is in the vague field of micromusic, drones, field-recordings and minimalism. Though, somehow he knows to stand out of most of the other music released in this field. This mainly has to do with his use of strings in certain pieces. His work can be found on labels such as Entr’acte, Mystery Sea, Install, Trente Oiseaux and many others.

For his first release on incredible Dragon’s Eye Recordings he presents us a work that was inspired by a 4 day stay in Krakow where he was attending for a live perfomance at Audio Art. During his visit Whetham stayed in the Kazimierz area of Krakow, which is the old Jewish area during the Second World War. This area is now mainly know because the Nazis turned it into the Jewish ghetto during occupation. This place still breaths the air of this horrible time.
Inspired by this area Whetham started composing music.

The CD has three pieces of music on it and starts out with Part One (An Uncertain Distance), which is build up from unrecognizable field-recordings creating a haunting atmosphere. We hear scratching of metal, weird pops, the humming wind, radio statics and more.  The recordings are very well chosen to start this CD.

The second piece is Part Second (Paths, Crossing) is the longest of the three pieces. And not only the longest, it is also the one with most variation. At first we hear those field-recordings again, quietly. Slowly the volume increases and the first signs of (synthesized) strings appear, sad strings I must say. The sad heavy tones are in contrast with the recordings of birds singing their song. These birds amplify the feeling as they have been the innocent bystanders all the time, not aware of all atrocities done to the Jewish people.
While the strings fade the birds stay and new field-recordings are added. Soft drones of distant traffic and ventilation while there are the sounds of people working and talking. We get some time to rest, though a sadness stays.
Again we  return to the part where strings slowly fade in, this time as if they are playing in the room next door. Sad and slow. And after that again drones on the lower scale, but also soft piercing tones. A great piece which tells us so much. It breathes the area, you can feel the atmosphere as if it is surrounding you.

In the last piece Part Third (The Chamber) is more dense with thick layers of humming ventilation sounds and dripping water. Though in the end we get a piece again where very soft strings are playing while we hear cars passing by. It is as if we are taking a step away. Time fades away, slowly erasing history from this place.

Simon Whetham presents us something really special here, something that reminds us of the past. It is a damn fine piece of work showing a really good way field-recordings can be combined with classical music elements, something we do not hear very often. Highly recommended.
– Collecting Records

The basis for Simon Whetham´s praiseworthy Prayers Unheard is the crime that keeps on giving and keeps on taking away. Invited to Kraków, he visited the old Jewish Quarter of Kazimierz, once a thriving though poor commuity, later a ravaged ghetto, today a site of Polish-Jewish cultural and historical renewal. Assuming correctly that prayers for salvation from the Nazi juggernaut went unheard by God, he made extensive field recordings of the area to see if the surviving structures and paving stones heard anything.

The three movements he composed – ”An Uncertain Distance”,”Paths, Crossing” and ”The Chamber” – are each very distinctive. The first is indeed uncertain, tentative. The second, and longest at close to half an hour, opens with birdsong and sweet, sober strings, but evolves into something much more abstract and disturbingly plaintive and moves into a colder, harsher reality, uncomfortably reminiscent of capture and confinement.

Appalled Christians often quoted The Gospel of Luke in the face of the ongoing genocide: ”I tell you…if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out”. The final act ticks and drones, time passing, Whetham searching for what is trying to be said.
– Sonomu

Simon Whetham est un artiste complet d’origine anglaise. Son travail est régulièrement présenté en galeries d’art que ce soit pour des performances ou des installations. Il est principalement sollicité pour ses travaux sur les field recordings et la spatialisation, participant notamment à des projets de recherche en Islande et au Brésil. Nous ne l’avions jamais croisé jusque là, mais on peut trouver ses travaux sur des labels tels que Trente Oiseaux, CONV, ou encore Cronica.

Cet album a vu le jour suite à une invitation à jouer à l’Audio Art Festival de Cracovie. Pour cela, l’Anglais a d’abord passé 3-4 jours dans la ville et plus particulièrement dans l’ancien quartier juif, afin de procéder à des enregistrements d’ambiances sonores qui serviraient de matière première au concert. L’idée était de capter l’esprit du quartier, la tristesse ambiante qui y règne encore aujourd’hui, comme si les fantômes du passé avaient décidé d’y rester pour l’éternité.

La musique de Simon Whetham est avant tout ambient, et ambiante donc, avec un premier morceau très largement dominé par les captations effectuées sur place. Un assemblage de bruitages, des souffles ambiants, une roue de vélo qui tourne dans le vide, des sons et grésillements qui semblent provenir de machines, et au final une atmosphère plutôt industrielle.

Mais c’est le deuxième morceau qui, avec ses 23mn, domine l’album. Part Second (Paths, Crossing) nous permet d’aborder un style un peu plus classiquement musical. Les field recordings reprennent un rôle d’accompagnement, de textures vivantes tandis que l’artiste joue de nappes mélodiques et cinématographiques, entre chœurs et cordes avec quelques envolées de toute beauté. Les oiseaux piaillent, des clés tintent, des voix dans une cage d’escalier, une porte qui se ferme et l’on change d’univers.

Simon Whetham crée une histoire et invite l’auditeur dans son monde, plutôt doux, parfois inquiétant, hanté, voire un peu brutal quand se font entendre de brusques glissements et claquements métalliques que l’on imagine être les portes de hangars. Part Third (The Chamber) constitue une parfaite conclusion à l’album, comme une accalmie composée de souffles, une approche plus linéaire qui prend son envol final sur des boucles de cordes, abandonnant la ville avec une légère note d’espoir.

Pas de grosse surprise mais un disque qui séduira à coup sûr les amateurs d’ambient et de field recordings.
– EtherREAL

Bristol sound artist Simon Whetham‘s extensive CV bespeaks years of sound auscultation, a questing mike that’s surveyed sundry fields, issuing in sound installations, exhibitions, workshops, and releases on entr’acte, Con-v, Lens, Gruenrekorder, and Trente Oiseaux. In preparation for a performance in Krakow, he recorded sounds in the old Jewish area of Kazimierz that became a ghetto under Nazi occupation – sounds which then became the base material for a programmatic work on the place. Expressed as research, Whetham’s enquiry would be a study of how the sounds of the locale operate as bearers of the residual horror of the Shoah – an audio exploration of the presenting past. The eponymous Prayers Unheard are those of those Krakowians who thought their God would save them, an imprint of these, along with their suffering, long since faded, perhaps still permeating the city’s structures. Whetham’s method is his customary mix of field recordings with granular synthesis and spatial sound treatments. Some impressions: “Part First (An uncertain Distance)” is suggestive of a kind of arrival – muffled environmental sounds, discreetly treated, engine rumble, rails, PA effluvia; below dark rumblings, above a static patina; emergent traces of musical theme of plangent portent then curtailed with disjunctive crackle. “Part Second (Paths, crossing)” (clip below) deploys organ-like drones, accruing a melancholic solemnity, the sound of birds and other minutiae, great plains of rumble and static. Signifiers of the journey to nearby Auschwitz ensue – muffled voices, machine clatter, tramping footsteps, train freight car doors; perhaps even a furnace is turned on. “Part third (The Chamber)” is an insistent discomfiting build up of minute gestures that intensifies until a slow fall inwards, a subtraction of sound signalling life receding; then the strains of an orchestra with a lone violin rising above, perhaps the last vestiges of the inextinguishable human spirit. Whetham’s work is ultimately sonically suggestive though its conceptual engagement is the hook, premised as it is on a psychogeographic notion that the sound of places resonates with the psychological endowment of the past, somehow spatio-temporally ingrained.
– Igloo Magazine

Il arrive aux disques de faire l’effet de villes ou de quartiers qui plaisent alors qu’on ne s’y attendait pas. On était venu là on ne sait pourquoi et nous voici sous le charme d’une rue, d’une façade, d’un bâtiment quelconque. C’est l’effet que fait Prayers Unheard de Simon Whetham, un artiste sonore anglais qui s’est amouraché des field recordings.

Grâce à eux, il raconte ce qu’il a vu ou ressenti à l’occasion d’une promenade. Ici, c’est Kazimierz, l’ancien quartier juif de Cracovie. Ici, c’est Prayers Unheard & ici l’abstraction est totale et belle à ce point qu’on en sort convaincu qu’une grande symphonie peut être abstraite. Comme si Gavin Bryars interprétait minimalement le Jüdische Chronik de Chostakovitch. Ces chants sont dramatiques parce que ravagés par l’espoir dans le même temps qu’ils sont voués à se taire.

Prayers Unheard quant à elles vous montent à la gorge à force de tocsins étouffés, de vents et d’aigus électroniques. Une oppression qui chavire, un violon lointain qui vous rappelle que le chant des oiseaux (que l’on entend aussi) n’est pas le plus courageux de tous. Est-ce maintenant un bout de Stormy Weather qui s’infiltre avant que des pas vous ramènent à votre point de départ : celui à partir duquel vous avez commencé à découvrir le Monde. Celui que vous retrouverez pour renouer avec votre innocence.
– le son du Grisli

Bristol, UK sound artist Simon Whetham works in various art fields like sound installations, field recordings, audiovisual, sound design and photographer and model making.

He has a large discography since 2006 of albums, singles and one-off projects.

The name of this “Prayers Unheard” is related with the city of Krakov, Poland where the Nazi occupation during the World War II took place.

Whetham was invited to perform to the Audio Art and he was asked to arrive before the event so he could record the sounds of the city and used them for the performance. So he could stay for some days and live in the Kazimierz area of Krakow, an old Jewish area which was a ghetto.

This CD consists in three parts “An Uncertain Distance”, “Paths, Crossing” and “The Chamber” with the main source of field recordings and radio transmissions which are processed in a sound design work.

“An Uncertain Distance” with metal objects sounds, car engines and radio airwaves creates a dark atmosphere. On contrary “Paths, Crossing” the emotion behind is sadness, some bird songs and snippets of classic orchestrations but suddenly changes to obscure drones and inaudible sharp sounds.
– Loop.cl

Release of the Month ~ January 2011 ~ #3
On Prayers Unheard, sound artist Simon Whetham captures the spirit of Krakow by recording its empty spaces. But even empty spaces have resonance: in this case, the echoes of human horror. As evident by its title, Prayers Unheard is a document of yearning. It delves into mystery and emerges without answers, which is how it achieves its unsettling power. The voices of the Holocaust are still whispering, still falling on deaf ears, still being dismissed as the wind, but here at least, they have been given a new throat.
– The Silent Ballet

Simon Whetham has been involved in a diverse array of field recordings-based and site-specific projects since a 2005 research trip to Iceland initiated his composing career. Since then, he’s recorded in Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest; issued material on labels such as Trente Oiseaux, Mystery Sea, Entr’acte, and Gruenrekorder; produced radio works for Resonance FM and Kunst Radio Austria; and participated in residencies at the Art Container in Tallinn, Estonia. But his latest recording might be the most powerful one to date, given the historical resonance that attends the project in question.

Having been invited to perform at Audio Art in Krakow in February 2010, Whetham proposed visiting the city prior to the event to record the sounds of the place and compose a site-specific piece for the event. He stayed in the Kazimierz area, which is the old Jewish location that during World War II became a ghetto through Nazi persecution. Whetham found himself powerfully affected by the setting as it was along its streets that Nazi trucks and tanks spirited away innocent hordes to Auschwitz, and even though the nightmare occurred more than a half-century ago the horror of that time remains as an indelible presence for those who know their history as they walk its streets. Needless to say, the title of Whetham’s three-part work refers to the prayers of the Jewish people that went unheard and that haunt the geographical locale as a ghostly testament to their suffering.

In “Part First (An Uncertain Distance),” we’re presented with natural environmental sounds muffled, their identifiable character camouflaged by subtle mutations. We hear rumble and the whirr of an engine, as well as other sounds that emerge and then disappear—until the faint trace of a musical theme appears at the six-minute mark, immediately imbuing the material with an aura of sadness. During “Part Second (Paths, Crossing),” the twitter of birds resounds alongside an orchestra’s elegiac themes, the innocent beauty of the creatures an obvious contrast to the horrors that await the citizens rounded up and shipped off to die. Despite the ambiguous character of the sounds that emerge, the appearance of muffled voices, mechanical clatter, and trudging footsteps can’t help but suggest a train car’s heavy doors being opened and its human cargo being emptied. When a machine loudly starts up towards the end of this central part, it evokes the image of a furnace being turned on in the crematorium. A comparatively more ambiguous character pervades “Part Third (The Chamber)” as it opts for an industrial ambient-drone style. But three-quarters of the way along, the mechanical sounds die out and the strains of an orchestra with a solo violin at the forefront rises from the ashes, suggestive of the resilient human spirit, followed by birds and peoples’ voices.

Artists are often seen to be treading dangerous ground when they create work that’s tied in some way to the Holocaust as they thereby make themselves vulnerable to the accusation that such efforts, no matter how well-intentioned, trivialize an event of such enormity. But that’s not the case here: though he adopts an objective and unsentimental eye in his shaping of the work and in the handling of its materials, Whetham nevertheless manages to transmute the site-specific sounds of the locale into a deeply affecting meditation that honours the memory of the dead in dignified manner.
– Textura

Simon Whetham’s work approach to a performance for Audio Art in Krakow was to situate himself within the city and record sounds in situ before the performance. Specifically he stayed in the Kazimierz area of Krakow, the old Jewish area that became a ghetto during the Second World War under Nazi occupation. The story of the neighbourhood during this period informs Whetman’s work as he explores a kind psycho-geography in which the work fashions sounds of the area as if they contained the residual horror of the Shoah. It is this very idea of non-linear relationships that Whetham uses to construct his work, linking the psyche of contemporary Krakow to its past and by implication its future. You could draw a long bow and make the claim that he considers time as spatial, not linear, and the resonant echoes of the period remain palpable in the environs, the architecture and fabric of the city.

The work itself is in three parts: Part First (An uncertain Distance), Part Second (Paths, crossing), Part third (The Chamber). All reside within the frame of the electro acoustic work and fashion recordings into sound and mix recordings with granular synthesis and spatial sound treatment which seems to his favoured working methodology. It starts with a kind of arrival, metallic sharpness of rails, and the hint of public address speakers, dark clouds rumbling and the patina of electro static infused throughout. A lull before the emergence of rain and a dark undercurrent amongst the jostling contorted sonic shapes elicited. A background hint melody is disrupted by growing static and sharply cut with a disjunctive crackle. Part Second introduces sharp undertones and drone like treatment of sound to begin, almost hinting at an organ like sound, acquiring a melancholic beauty, introducing the sound of birds with the intermittent electronic touch and the gentle rumble of static. It moves more towards great planes of electronic noise which acquire the suggestive sound of the train freight car. It is as if to signify the journey to the nearby Auschwitz through sound. This moves to a more industrial hum, with environmental sounds, people’s voices, the clatter of objects and then the dense hum and rumble of sound. Drones are shaped and a form of mournful chorus appears in the shapes of sound, recurring in cycles and building in effect. All the while incidental electro acoustic sounds are occurring. Part third has a more consistent form of a tone and sound shape gradually building a bleak and discomforting presence introducing minute gestures. There are brief changes in layers and the build works up to intensity as if a machine room humming, before sliding, fading into silence via a bleak section where the incidental noise of life is stripped away. A lone violin plays somewhere in the environs and recedes before silence.
While the subject matter is bleak, Wheatman approaches the sound of environs in a manner that bespeaks of the psychological endowment of periods and how they can infiltrate the spatial and life activity through time. In a sense his environmental approach interlinks the pattern of all life as a more intimate and personal the actions of distant others. Prayers Unheard suggests the absence of a response of a deity, but implicates us through the constructed narrative linking our contemporary environment with the Shoah. Thus widening our circle of care larger, beyond the self and immediate other, to the very fabric of the architecture of cities and society in and through time.
– Cyclic Defrost

It’s hard to say anything new about the Holocaust. Many have tried, but fallen short; and recent efforts have fallen prey to the law of diminishing returns. The more numerous the attempts, the more dismissive the comments: “Oh, another Holocaust book. Oh, another Holocaust movie.” To be fair, many well-meaning artists have aimed too high. When people attempt to define the indefinable or comprehend the incomprehensible, they set before them an unachievable task. In cases such as these, a peripheral or metaphorical approach is often best: a poem, a parable, a folk tale. For Simon Whetham, an ear is more valuable than a voice, and a sound is worth a thousand songs.

Whetham has been working in the field of sound art for quite some time, and has amassed a discography in the dozens. As previous recordings have demonstrated, he’s not just going around recording things, he’s trying to get at the heart of things. When Whetham was invited to perform in Krakow, he was faced with what was perhaps the biggest challenge of his life: how to capture the uncapturable, how to speak the unspeakable. And so instead, he decided to listen. For days, he wandered the streets of Kazimierz, which had become a Jewish ghetto under the Nazis. As described in the liner notes, “The Jewish people of Krakow believed their God would save them. Their prayers, along with the sounds of pain and suffering, have long since died away, unheard. But perhaps the stone and the metal of the city retains some echo, some imprint from that time …”

One might expect Prayers Unheard to be a harsh and harrowing affair, but it is not. Only one sudden sound intrudes on the solace, midway through the second track. Instead, the album serves as a witness, a meditation and a tribute, and the album’s site-specific nature makes it feel authentic and historic. Ironically, the solemn beauty of the tryptych seems to imply that the prayers are not in fact unheard, but heard far too late, as distant, restless reverberations.

For the most part, the album is a quiet one, packed with tones, creaks and unidentifiable sounds. String and organ melodies peer through the debris and dust, elegaic and half-hidden like chalk-covered mirrors. Whenever they surface, it’s like light creeping from the cracks, the families being freed from the floorboards; but whenever they disappear, a cold menace seeps in. The aforementioned sound – a deadly crunch at 17:23 of the second track that follows a discrete silence – is like that of a bulldozer breaking down a wall or an SS officer splintering a root cellar door. In its wake, a tinitus tone is induced, a ringing in the ears that may be intended to mimic the inability to forget, but that cannot mute the tiny sliding sounds underneath. At this point in the narrative, the music, the sweetness, even the birds have been silenced; the boards and twisted metal are left to bear mute witness, alone.

Desolate drones and insistent knocks haunt the closing piece like wind blowing through the pipes of a desecrated organ. A repeated beep, like that of an emergency vehicle in reverse, rises and subsides. Human voices return, although at first one must strain to hear them. Glass vibrates; a bow is drawn across strings; a single violin phrase is joined by a single sung note, nearly on the outskirts of perception. Then birds, conversation, and footsteps become audible as the listener is returned to the present day.

This (slightly) busy ending serves as a border to the dark gap at the album’s center. The violin loop of the closing track is the same as that of the opening track, but it carries more weight the second time around, as it offers familiarity in the midst of abandonment, the sad gratitude of a childhood toy rescued from rubble. The repetition is a comfort, a suggestion that the horrors of the Holocaust may have robbed Krakow’s wartime residents of their words and their lives, but have not been able to silence their tragic, wordless music.

We hanged our harps on the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
~ Psalm 137
– The Silent Ballet