The San Francisco-based label Acousmatique Recordings sure is a gateway to some extraordinary listening. Run by the sound artist and musician Jack Hertz, who also operates the label Aural Films, Acousmatique Recordings is dedicated to genres like Musique Concrete, Electroacoustic and Acousmatic, Immersive Audio, as well as other left field forms of West Coast music. This past June, the label released John Wiggins‘ The Listened To Sound LP.
Part of the home-taping underground in the 1980’s with self-released cassettes like 1982’s Tuned Space, 1985’s Anagenic, 1985’s Particle Music, and 1986’s All The Truth At Once, Wiggins would go on to become an Emmy winning film and television sound designer working for companies like HBO as well as his own production studio, Wonderland Sound. The artist is known for his work in the Musique Concrete form, and in 2017 he was one of the winners of the “PRESQUE RIEN” Luc Ferrari Prize–a contest which allowed participants to create a work using sounds from Ferrari’s sound archives.
The Listened To Sound continues Wiggins’ work in the form with the record being meticulously constructed from audio sources recorded in the field and studio. Interested in the kinds of “timbral, spatial, and acoustic properties” that make you “notice a sound,” Wiggins explains:
“I listen for that bit of new information in the sound, that uniqueness, that thing that made me turn my head and push record.”
Comprised of eight tracks, The Listened To Sound finds the artist deftly weaving audio sources into nuanced tapestries of aural experience. Continually engaging and filled with poignant detail, Wiggins’ arrangements ask you to approach the listened to world as living fields of sound energy.
