How do you express your thoughts and emotions about the deepening ecological crisis without being either too preachy or mundane? Maybe the Canadian The Silence Collective holds one possible answer with their latest music/poetry presentation RiverChants.
The collective itself is a loose congregation of artists that this time around consists of Jeff Bird, Matt Brubeck, Daniel Fischlin, Gary Diggins, Christine Duncan, Kathryn Ladano, Joe Sorbara, and Lewis Melville.
Speaking about the album, as the collective notes, “water circulates as the planet’s lifeblood, sustaining life everywhere, ecologically, rivers act as arterial expressions of hydrology where ceaseless transformation and mutability―from mist and condensation to dewdrops, rain, ice, snowmelt and runoff, water flow and oceanic wave―are the norm. River sounds carry the melodies of time and space, biotic flux, interconnection and interdependence, local and cosmic meanings.”
On the other hand RiverChants hits, the listening system coinciding with the excessive, sudden floods in Germany with scores of people dead and thousand or so still missing. And our abuse of those waters obviously continues. The experimental, avant-garde nature of the music/poetry on RiverChants in many ways express both aspects of the water and rivers specifically ― the celebration of the lifeline they represent and provide and the destructiveness and the dark side that comes when we misuse that lifeline.
The improvisational character of the music in combination with the poetry expresses both sides of the story in a manner that on the surface seems impenetrable, but when you immerse yourself actually becomes quite compelling listening that should make us think harder than we have done so far.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=2127123028 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small track=809934585]
