Sketching Venus – An Impermanence
(Out Now)
There’s a fabulous discipline behind Mortality Tables. Everything seems precision planned and executed perfectly. In the nicest possible way, it’s an experimental music geeks wet dream.
In essence, the label centres around field recordings by founder Mat Smith which are then deconstructed, remixed, manipulated, etc… by an array of artists which have in the past included the likes of Gareth Jones, Rupert Lally and Simon Fisher Turner. Less is often more but the quality and engagement is immense.
Recent release, An Impermanence by Sketching Venus (aka Smith himself) encapsulates the label to a tee. A fifty-four minute recording made during ‘a maintenance visit to an open-plan bank’s rising security screen system’ is presented in its raw form and is a bizarrely listen. We hear the sound of voice chatter and keyboard patter whilst alarm’s sound off in the background and create a live collage of sound.
This isn’t music, or is it? At what point does noise become music and when does music become noise? It’s personal choice of course but it does open up the joy glands to the sounds that surround us every second of every day and listening to them can provide comfort and disturbance in equal measure.
Look out for The Impermanence Project which will run throughout the rest of 2025 as it promises to be a complete sensory initiative.
https://mortalitytables.bandcamp.com/album/an-impermanence
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