Thitherpale by GNAUMGN

thither: to or toward that place

pale: an area within determined bounds or subject to a particular jurisdiction

GNAUMGN have been talking for some time about doing a project based on the duo's respective domestic spaces, located over 130m apart in Cape Paterson and Melbourne. The idea was to produce a one-take recording of our respective home environments and combine them, beginning and ending with more traditional GNAUMGN magic. Thitherpale is the result of a game of making-strange what is present and familiar and which, therefore, might come to be taken for granted. It stems from an appreciation of the sonic characteristics of the things we use on a day-to-day basis but which do not typically make a sound or, if they do, makes sounds that might well be heard but not listened to.

A Dmn Shn's contribution begins with drumming before moving outside, then fridge hums and polystyrene bangs and scrapings in a storeroom, up stairs amid chattering birds, table leg clangs in the lounge room, more banging and clanging and the sounds of drumsticks, apparently in hand the entire time, heard once more as they are rolled across the floor. The audio moves into the kitchen (bowls and exhaust fans), the bedroom (wooden bed slats, venetian blinds and the pages of books), the toilet (flushing and refilling), the bathroom (white-goods and shower-head), before returning to the studio with a GNAUMGN-eriffic drum solo.

This long-form, perambulatory field recording was combined with audio captured by D. Prescott-Steed in his own domestic habitat, comprising a fidget spinner, gong, bells, fish tank pump humming as it hums against an upright heater and many other objects, the sound a room makes when you jump up and down hard enough to cause the windows to rattle. DPS also took a quasi-boot-camp approach to listening, for a time dragging himself around the house and across the floor in order to access the sounds heard when underneath the bed, chairs, a table, and so on. It was an attempt to go against the natural altitude of listening that comes from the genetically pre-determined height of a human body.

Sounds waves enter our ear canals and are detected by our brains. By the time we hear a sound it is already inside us, initiating imagination. Thitherpale is about imaginative listening, and reflects GNAUMGN's long-standing curiosity in how we creatively navigate our built environments. Rubbing against a tradition that art only happens when we're "going out", Thitherpale is an album that unpacks the listening pleasure of domestic space, acknowledging a shared recognition of the importance of home, of washing up, of having a clean carpet and of the other living creatures who are forced to live amongst all our piles of stuff - and the art that occurs when we just listen to where we already are.


A DMN SHN: sticks, white-goods, flush cistern, assorted bits and bobs

D PRESCOTT-STEED: body dragging, occasional bells and whistles

FREENOISE
NEKROJAZZ
PUNKAMBIENT
POWERJAMS