Recently released by Yann Novak’s awesome imprint Dragon’s Eye, this output by sound artist Joey Largent can be also considered an output of the sites where he recorded the two long-lasting site-specific recordings he made in an isolated lava tube of the Falls Creek Cave system nearby that indigenous Cowlitz people called Lawetlat’la, an active stratovolcano in Skamania County, Washington State, also known as Mount St.Helens. Geological sites like this one stimulated the fantasy and inspired the technical efforts of many sound artists – I could mention many releases that were strongly related to an area with distinctive geological features such as Geir Jenssen’s “Stromboli” -, but this one combines the exploit of the specific features of the environment with a system of percussions based on mallets and seven close-microphoned cymbals almost acting as an aural instrument to detect the activity within the caves. The layers of harmonics generated from cymbals, that evokes a claustrophobic space without overwhelming the voice of the cave (a perpetual drip of cave water) in “Below Diorite Waters”, seems to get more turbulent in the second session “Wind from Inside Me”, where some puffs of air join the chorus that Joey already assembled for the first session, whose sonic strategy seems to have taken inspiration from C.C.Hennix and Henry Flint’s Hallucinatory Ecstatic Sound Environment genre as well as from an extensive reinterpretation La Monte Young (one of Joey’s masters and guides together with Rose Okada and Michael Harrison) and Marian Zazeela’s concept of the Dream House – even if the final result could also surmise some cymbal-driven works by Z’ev -. Definitely deserving a listen.
– Vito Camarretta, Chain D.L.K.