the duo of Eva Pöpplein and Janko Hanushevsky traveled through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam along the mighty Mekong River in autumn 2008.  however, despite being in Gruenrekorder’s Soundscape Series, this is not a collection of straight field recordings.  the river jungle sounds are re-edited, put through various effects and combined with other sound sources.  the first addition is prepared bass guitar which does make for some nice experimental textures, but after this introduction the disc heads more in an ambient direction using solemn synth sounds with an increase in echo added to the voices of the Mekong.  it is this ambient atmosphere which seems to be the most dominant in the disc’s 49 minutes.  packaged in a Digipak with a 12 page booklet, there are some nice photos of the region along with recollections of the compositional processing.  as they state, this disc is not meant to be a documentary and as such has a very European finish to it, in contrast to say the more raw sounds we have come to expect from Sublime Frequencies.
Gruenrekorder – Gruen 092
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