“The listening experience is like a trip into Blackburn’s Sonic Chocolate Factory…”
True to its title, Manuella Blackburn’s latest collection of works, Petites étincelles, is a dazzlingly sparkling album. The listening experience is like a trip into Blackburn’s Sonic Chocolate Factory where the listener receives a Golden-Ticket guided tour into the inner playground of a sitar, a tall glass of fizzy drink with large floating ice cubes, an old Kodak Brownie camera, a ticking clock, and a slide down the strings of a sarod into a warm pool haloed in light at its exit.
The album features five acousmatic works composed between 2012 and 2017; each exploring a musical language that explores the expressive potential in microscopic sounds. Often, her work features everyday sounds created by everyday objects such as clocks and cameras, and Blackburn’s utilisation of the ‘sound objects’ is direct, referential and highly recognisable.
Originally published by Tempo.Read the full review on Tempo