Cecyl Ruehlen - Sferics

Released: October 27

Sferics is something of a play on words, representing a kind of abbreviation of atmospherics and also its own technical definition as an audio-visual lightning document. Ruehlen goes into a bit of detail on this but suffice to say that the name is rather representative on the music contained within. The album leans very heavily on oddly processed field recording textures and combines them with more conventional methods of musical expression to include brass, woodwinds and other classical instruments. It all makes for a kind of hazy combinations as the instruments pop out from the melange of atmospheric sounds to bring a more concrete feeling to the music. 

The album itself is divided into two long-form tracks, each track giving us approximately twenty minutes of vaguely sketched ideas that collide with one another in slow motion. Throughout all the haziness, there is certainly a jazz-inspired feeling to much of the work, most notably on the first track with saxophone trills ringing through long droning hums of low frequency signals.  But this is only for the first part of this track, as it nears the end, these conventional elements disappear and are replaced almost entirely by heavily manipulated sounds and textures that come off as rather unnatural sounding. Of course, the added samples of voices that can be heard in the latter half definitely bring another level of uncanniness.