Listening Mirror - The Heart of the Sky

“My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separate what seems real from what seems fantastic.”
Gabriel García Márquez

As Listening Mirror, UK artist Jeff Stonehouse has provided us with a seemingly continuous stream of releases and works-in-progress on the net. His work has an immediately identifiable mark to it which can also be observed in 'The Heart of the Sky'. This four track piece gets a cassette release on Bathetic Records adds to the artist's already grand discography on Entropy Records, Heat Death Records, Hibernate, Rural Colours, Audio Gourmet and aReW Recordings.

Inspired by the artist's visit to Mexico - 'The Heart in the Sky' attempts to reconstruct the atmosphere of the place with field recordings taken at a porch over looking Mexico City, or lake at Tequesquitengo for example. Recapturing the essence of these places we can imagine their late night beauty, made ever more lucid by the contrasting real-world field recordings with other-worldly ambient drones.

Deep rumbling tones resonate in the appropriately titled 'Midnight at Teques, Storm Approaching'. Stonehouse, a traveller in the midsts of a foreign land - observing, capturing, understanding - introduces us to his interpretation of Mexico.  Although certainly dark in tone, colour and light radiate from within the murky folds of the track.

'Ah Pukuh is here' (Ah Pukuh - from the Mayan god of death) is a slow, cavernous piece, creaking with an insistent tidal movement and exuding a sense of foreboding reinforced by the track's title. Vocalist Alicia Merz as Bird of Passage adds her ethereal wispy vocals to last track 'Mixtli sleeps' (Mixtli meaning 'cloud') further extending the dream-like feel of the album.

Stonehouse conjures myriad images of Mexico, particularly of dramatic clouds in the sky, and locates the listener within the real, and unreal. In doing so he achieves an experience not unlike that of magic realism writing, by writers such as Ben Okri, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or Salman Rushdie. This is where real and unreal meet to become a kind of hyper-reality, and accept the truth that . An inspiring piece that permeates the listener with richly atmospheric sonics, and imbues a sense of floating upon them.  

http://soundcloud.com/listening-mirror
http://www.batheticrecords.com/the_heart_of_the_sky/