Walking

Walking

Description: 
Walking, talking, listening, sounding, remembering, placing
Composers: 
Viv Corringham
Performers: 
Viv Corringham
Catalog Number: 
#872
Genre: 
experimental
Collection: 
ambient
improvisation
spoken word
solo voice
women
Location: 

New York City, NY

Price: 
$15.00
Release Date: 
Oct 29, 2013
Liner Notes: 
View
1 CD
V. Corringham: WalkingiTunes Artist's PageiTunes Album Page
Song TitleTimePrice
1.Maresia08:53$0.99
2.Skywalks07:30$0.99
3.Island Lines09:41$0.99
4.Disegno03:35$0.99
5.Slack Tide05:29$0.99
6.Town with Sea09:31$0.99
7.Broken Land04:46$0.99
One Sheet: 

A woman singing - haunting and lyrical then bursting into jagged, guttural sounds; a man speaking about memories of the port; another voice saying she longs for quiet gardens; layers of singing and speaking are interwoven with splashes and seagulls – perhaps the sea or a river. The tracks come from different places and the conversations, sounds and singing reflect the character of that place: a lively Hong Kong market, a polluted waterway in Brooklyn, the labyrinthine skyways of Minneapolis, a bar with panoramic views of Porto, an East London beach…

British singer and sound artist Viv Corringham creates works that incorporate conversations with residents on walks, recordings of ambient sounds and her own improvised singing. These relate to her very successful ongoing project Shadow-walks, which has been widely presented from New York to Portugal to Hong Kong. Now the works have been gathered together for this album.

Viv Corringham has walked with local inhabitants in many countries and different continents, asking them to lead her on a special walk that has meaning for them. Later she takes a solo walk along the same route, trying to sense the person’s traces on the path and to make these traces audible through her own improvised singing. Partly inspired by the Aboriginal songlines and the Kaluli song paths, these works “trace a kind of metaphorical path through time and space, which define a place.” (Ulster Publishing Almanac)

Reviews: 

TEXTURA
"[L]ess a recording of music than a polyphonic mosaic. … The fifty-minute recording makes for a fascinating travelogue [and] it inarguably offers a rich feast for the ears." [FULL ARTICLE]

AUDIOPHILE AUDITION
"[E]xtremely fascinating. ... [A]n unusual audio exploration of environments and stories." [FULL ARTICLE]
John Sunier

THE WIRE
"
The initial conversations ... provide words and associations that dissolve into breathing, ululating, humming and chanting to produce not language but a present soundscape. My favourite track "Skywalks", recorded in the skyway system of Minneapolis, retains the conversation as idea rather than as sound ... Her revoicings produce a sound that neither talks nor sings but conjures and cajoles a landscape from the body."
Salomé Voegelin

Corringham's enchanting musical journey…possessed a quality that set the pulses racing.

- The Wire, Edwin Pouncey

Corringham is a wordless vocalist capable of any tone, timbre, sound or scat the human voice can conjure.

- allmusic, Michael G Nastos

Kate Bush, Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard, Diamanda Galas, Kurt Schwitters,Jack Kerouac, Luciano Berio, Laurie Anderson, Moondog, John Cage, Glenn Gould, Fortunato Depero, Sheila Chandra.

Viv Corringham is all of these and not these. She deconstructs language with such lightness that her compositions become delicate paintings of everyday life…Her voice resonates with Celtic melancholy while climbing onomatopoeic pathways...Hers is vibrant material: immediate, transparent and poetic.

- Altrevelocita, Michelle Davis

Corringham’s eerie, echoing mezzo-soprano takes on the force of an inner voice, infusing the spoken words with pungent emotion…an otherworldly incantation evoking the mysterious power of memory, suggesting the collective traces left by those who’ve walked the waterfront before us.

- Ulster Publishing Almanac, Lynn Woods

Corringham's preoccupation is with voicing the landscape and her project… offers an engaging glimpse of the emotional archaeology of a city.

- Irish Examiner, Don O'Mahony