Last Eldritch Pond is a work that centers on speculative bio-acoustics and the uncanny inscrutability of non-human lifeworlds. It is a concept album that sounds an imaginary bog pool somewhere in the uliginous midlands of Ireland. The composition envisages a wealth of hypothetical lifeforms interacting in a pond whose dimensions, under the surface, are vast and alien. The album’s conceptual touch-points are the writings of Stanislav Lem and Samuel R. Delany, two writers who had a profound grasp of the ‘otherness’ of the ‘other’ in science fiction literature; the ineffable cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft; and the writings of biologist Jakob von Uexkuell, who, more than any other scientist in the early 20th century, brought to light the philosophical ramifications exposed by the acknowledgement of animal consciousness. Von Uexkuell posited that each species of animal lives in its own unique lifeworld, or ‘Umwelt’, largely unimaginable to humans. These multituninous ‘Umwelten’ are determined, not only by the specific biological characteristics of each animal, but by the fact that these animals are conscious and have a world filled with meaning-infused signs. Seen in this light, non-humans are literally ‘otherworldly’.
The sounds on the album are almost exclusively derived from the modular setup I have been developing for a number of years, featuring interconnected feedback systems and varying degrees of unpredictability, in an attempt to channel the uncanny milieu of non-human communication.
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