Helena Gough – With What Remains

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” Elvis Costello once stated. Helena Gough writes on her homepage: “Sometimes I hope to offer a moment in which someone might sense that things do not have to be as they are… Because ‘words fail me’. Language leaves too much to be desired.” We rather listen to Gough’s challenging debut “With What Remains”, published on Entr’acte in 2007. Crackle, hiss, static, ground humming and electronic disturbances are the main ingredients of 7 pieces of which the first, named sift, stands out as a masterful composition of odd sounds and noises. Everything she does is based on recordings of mostly small things and happenings, which will be then transformed in various ways. This is how she describes her approach in few words:

“Using the real world as a source. Exploring the qualities of a sound. A process of uncovering, of revealing hidden details and turning perspective on its head. Searching for beauty in situations that might be considered ugly or irrelevant. A commitment to the potentials and possibilities of all things in the shadows. A fascination with states of stasis, by matter that appears to be still yet is always in motion. Searching for sounding movements that change our perception of time and textures that slowly evolve, rotate and turn in on themselves. To listen, rather than just to hear with dumb ears. The power of sound as a transformative experience, a place for uncertainty and substance.”