Loop. And Again.
Matilde Meireles
Physical Release
Released by Cronica
→ 8 October 2024
Loop. And Again. delves into the dynamics of magnetic fields, intricate wiring arrangements,and their interconnectedness with the shifts in the surrounding landscape. The album is part of X Marks the Spot, a larger project which used sound to map specific telecommunication boxes—only those emitting an audible drone—in the city of Belfast between 2013-2019. In the project, sound suggests different ways to engage with Belfast, where walking routes could be improvised to incorporate the drones as part of how we experience the city.
Loop. And Again. revisits and reinvents field recordings of the boxes mapped for X Marks the Spot. The album honours these ordinary objects that are part of the invisible fabric of the city by inviting us to listen to their materiality in great detail. Through this attentive shift in perspetive and scale, Matilde invites us to extend what we perceive as sonic vibrations in the urban environment.
Stream & Buy
Heard on the radio
BBC Radio 3, New Music Show
BBC Radio 3, Night Tracks
Dublab
RCV Lille 99
Radio Regent
KEPW 97.3 FM
Framework Radio
FSK 93.00 Hamburg
Freies Radio Neumünster
CITR 101.9FM
Radio Panik
FMR Toulouse
Asheville FM 103.3
Reviews
The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp, October 2024, Matthew Blackwell
Residents of Belfast may have noticed strange signs pasted onto telecommunication boxes around their neighborhoods in the past decade. One such sign, on Balfour Avenue, read: “Producing a continuous sound composed of: 92Hz, 120Hz, 178Hz, 235Hz, 408Hz, 580Hz, 1184Hz, 1327Hz, 3282Hz.” These were the work of Matilde Meireles, a sound artist and researcher whose X Marks the Spot project invited participants to alert her to any utility boxes emitting an audible hum. Meireles would then visit the box, record its drone, analyze it, and return with a poster advertising its frequencies. It was urban art meant to get people listening to their city. With Loop. And Again., Meireles takes the results of this research and loops and layers it with further electromagnetic, ambisonic, and hydrophonic recordings. The album is part social experiment, part sonic ecology, part environmental sound and part buzzing, drifting ambience. It should get the rest of the world listening to Belfast, too.
In "Loop. And Again.", Matilde Meireles invites listeners on a journey through Belfast’s hidden electromagnetic undercurrents, each track a sonic impression of the city’s humming, droning core. The album emerges from her research project "X Marks the Spot", where Meireles mapped telecommunications boxes whose ambient emissions formed unexpected symphonies across Belfast. Through three immersive tracks - "Introducing Variables", "Magnetic Fields", and "Cross Parade" - the album captures the interplay between urban infrastructure and the sounds of Belfast’s post-industrial terrain.
This isn’t just a passive listening experience; Meireles composes with recordings from contact microphones, an electromagnetic sensor, and ambisonic and hydrophone recordings of the River Lagan, crafting an experience that feels less like a piece of music and more like a meditation on modern cities' hidden life. The looping drones seem to tug at time itself, where the static hum of communication boxes reveals subtle tonal shifts - an echo of urban life’s heartbeat that most of us tune out.
"Cross Parade", featuring Tullis Rennie’s soulful trombone improvisations and snippets of everyday moments at a Belfast home, is a nod to the album's social roots, grounding this conceptual work in tangible community. It’s as if Meireles is saying: yes, there’s art in the infrastructure, but it’s inseparable from the people who dwell among it.
If you’re one to wander, "Loop. And Again." may lead you to see (or rather, hear) your own city differently. A work of quiet intensity, it’s as intricate as it is unassuming - a sonic exploration into the resonance of ordinary objects that often go unnoticed but, here, remind us of the quiet interconnections we share with the built environment. The album spins like the reel of an unseen film, one that takes place just beneath our daily awareness, pulling the listener into a rhythmic sway between art, research, and urban life.
Research
X Marks the Spot was included in Matilde's journal article Extended Phonography: Experiencing place through sound, a multi-sensorial approach published on Organised Sound, Cambridge University Press.
Abstract: In this article I propose the use of extended phonography as an integrated practice which offers the opportunity to overcome the fragmentation of the senses inherent in field recording. I outline how listening across practices empowers both recordist and audience to experience a richer engagement with the recorded environment. Furthermore, I introduce new forms of articulating the experience of place and its relationship to sound, by highlighting the conceptual framework of two of my contrasting works, the site/context-specific projects Moving Still: 1910 Avenida Atlântica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and X Marks the Spot. These works, both artistic and discursive, are a direct outcome of my practice of extended phonography. Through them, I attempt to address the need for a vocabulary that mirrors the new aesthetics arising in sound art and further expand the practice of field recording.