#sedimental

Pisaura-Asteraceae by SEDIMENTAL

Pisaura is a collaboration between Pisaro-Liu and Zizia, the already extent partnership of astrologist Amber Wolfe and horticulturalist/entomologist Jarrod Fowler. But the number of humans involved is drastically smaller than the number of collaborators listed on the webpage that Zizia have created to elucidate Asteraceae’s components and influences. A very incomplete list of those collaborators includes Clarkia amoena (Lehm.) A. Nelson & J.F. Macbr.; Aluminum Foil; Aspectek Yard Sentinel Ultrasonic Outdoor Pest & Animal Repellant; Gingko biloba L.; Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb Guitar Amplifier; Na2O; Unami-Vibe Chorus/Vibrato; and Yamaha Concert Grand Piano. It would seem that every tool used, element or life-form involved, or publication consulted during the composition, recording, and mastering of this work is a collaborator. Take that, hierarchies. And the name of the album, which is borrowed from a large family of flowering plants, further suggests that part of the point of this endeavor is to recognize that everything is connected, and that the dimensions of each collaborator’s contribution do not correspond to their value.  

So how does this vast web of information, equipment, and influences get transmuted into sound? The score was developed by using astrological charts to organize performances made using field recordings and musical actions. Rushing water, distant birds and further distance airplanes, whose titles are written backwards, share room with evidently human actions and blurry tunes. The keyboard melodies on “Venus Scorpio 19° 4th” and “Sun Sagittarius 19° 4th” feel like snatches from some overheard church service; “Pluto Libra 0° 3rd” sounds like a cut-up sequence of distant drum beats. Nothing sounds big and not much lasts long, but their cumulative effect is somewhat like a walk in the woods; each apparently organized moment seems to be part of a greater whole that fits together, but is too vast to completely perceive. Humans have asserted that that they contain multitudes, and maybe they do; however, Asteraceae invites you, dear human, to consider just what a speck in vastness you really are.