Winter, Why Are You Hiding Away From Me?

from Oracle Outpost by Oil Texture

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Field recordings are always something fresh and generate ideas. They are not just an element for me, and often become the track itself. It’s all about texture! For instance, I can share the story of one of the tracks: the Lugansk region is very rich in deposits of coal, and, as a result, there are a lot of coal enterprises and mines in the region. The people living there are all in some way connected to it. It can be a relative or a friend working in one of these mines. Those who grow up in Lugansk, like myself, always ask their parents and friends about what it is like in the depths of the Earth. I’ve been told all about how a mine works, but I only have a mental image of it.

Now, sound can brighten and strengthen our idea of a specific place, and by hearing what actually goes on down there my mental image becomes complete (and not just for me). As a result, I decided I had to find a way of recording what goes on inside a coal mine. People who don’t work there are not allowed anywhere near a mine and least of all to go down one of them. With great difficulty, one day, though, I persuaded a friend of mine to take my digital recorder to work with him (even if it was forbidden). His team worked directly on the lower levels! He didn’t know how to use the recorder nor what I specifically wanted him to record, so I just told him: just click the REC button before descending and this will be more than enough. And as a result he got me a recording made at a depth of 926 meters. It was incredible, something similar to the sound of a flooded cave. The sound rising from the depths was similar to the sound of the airplane.

I then made a looped sample and combined it with guitar sounds and processed it using echo and delay. The result is a collage of field recordings and guitar sounds, telling us about a kind of reversed event, when something good and bright becomes cold and dark, when winter comes after spring. This is a kind of allegory about the hard work of people working there, of their mood when they go down.

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from Oracle Outpost, released December 25, 2019

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Oil Texture Riga, Latvia

Oil Texture is a media artist and experimental music project, founded by UNIX/Linux systems engineer Vitaly Lebukhorsky, started in Luhansk, Ukraine in 2012.
Since 2014, I have lived in different countries and record material on my recorder, portable shortwave receiver and DIY devices. Now I live in Montreal, Canada. ... more

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