Natasha Barrett

Bouteilles de Klein collects music that Natasha Barrett composed between 2003 and 2008, split across two discs: works for the concert or listening situation on the first, works first designed as installations on the second. Three multi-part projects run through the set (the Sub Terra Cycle, the Barely project and Microclimates III-VI), with Avoid Being Eaten by Mimicking Other Less Palatable Species (ABEMOLPAS) and Mobilis in Mobili as two concert pieces from another period. Everything was remixed for stereo, 4.0 and 5.0 surround, and binaural headphone listening.

Microclimates III-VI, commissioned by Grieg-07 for the centenary of Grieg’s death, comes from a field trip in Western Norway in April 2007: hydrophones lowered from a rowing boat at the face of the Briksdal glacier, others thrown off a bridge into the rapids at Holvik, a storm on Utvær island. ABEMOLPAS applies stochastic resonance, where noise can boost weak signals, to farm animal sounds. Mobilis in Mobili takes its title from Jules Verne and grew out of the larger Trade Winds.

In Rhizaria (Barely: part-4) the cellist Tanja Orning is recorded with extreme close microphones and the electronics are created directly from her playing. Under the Sea Floor (Coring and Strata) uses recordings from a University of Oslo core-sampling project in the Oslo fjord and data from a TNT blast captured by 2000 geophones. Barely: part-1, a 70-minute installation made with the architect Birger Sevaldson and the group Ocean North for Kanonhallen in Oslo in 2007, is reduced here to 39 minutes and meant to be played at the edge of audibility.

Born in Norwich in 1972, Natasha Barrett studied with Jonty Harrison and Denis Smalley for her master’s and doctoral degrees, and has been based in Norway since 1999. Her awards include the Giga-Hertz-Preis in 2008 and the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2006.

2 DVD-Audio in OGplus, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 10104/105, 2010.