Aria Rostami & Daniel Blomquist
Still
Glacial Movements
Like many men, the team of Aria Rostami & Daniel Blomquist find Antarctica fascinating. Five years ago, they released a performance piece (Wandering Eye) contemplating the best spot on the icy continent around the South Pole to look to the heavens. All locations work well, so long as the wind was still. Now this new, equally quiet and enigmatic project reveals how time can change its motion in cold weather. Having spent most of my youth the the bitter Wisconsin winters, I can confirm: “Cold slows everything down. Everything!” Winter just would never seem to end. That spirit is captured with this CD of drones and water glasses rubbed until they sing. Tracks denote them selves as “-2°C: and “-3°C” and ultimately “A Paralysis.” I know well that of which they speak. Tracks on this collection flow one to another with little change in pacing or temperature. But change does appear. Chords become tenser, darker, and threatening. Ice cracks, even in solidity it’s a malleable, pliable and brittle material that shatters and flows back to unity. Rocks erode, penguins seek shelter, and the winter flows on, unaware of any planetary warming. Tracks flow together like glaciers sharing a valley to the sea, and through all, the great cycle of water continues to wash us clean. This is the sound of glaciation, run though a very artistic filter.
