LE156

Seaworthy is the conduit for Sydney-based instrumentalist and sound artist Cameron Webb. His music is built around melodic looped guitars and textural drones inspired by, and infused with, the incidental sounds of local ecosystems.

Matt Rösner is a sound artist from regional Western Australia. He works with an organic sense of space and time constructed using various acoustic instruments, custom build software patches and detailed field recording studies. He aims to produce an immersive listening space for reflection and quiet mediation. Seaworthy and Matt Rösner have previously collaborated on three recordings that have been released by New York based label,12k. As a duo they have performed live on both the east and west coasts of Australia.

Artist notes:
For Bundanon, we worked with environmental and instrumental sounds recorded and composed during a week-long residency at Bundanon Art Gallery and wildlife sanctuary. Gifted to the Australian public by Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne, Bundanon, is a creative place for artists to immerse themselves in a truly distinctive landscape on the New South Wales South Coast.

Bundanon is the result of instrumental improvisations in response to time spent in the surrounding local environment. The Musicians Hut sits within Boyd’s property, enclosed by the area’s breathtaking vistas and natural soundscapes. Recordings from local bushland and river formed a foundation for twin looped guitars intertwined and overlapped in happy accidents of synchronicity and asynchronous friction. The session was informed by discussions of the ever encroaching urbanisation into the surrounding pristine environments. Even refuges such as the Bundanon property are still susceptible to the buzz of human activity, however distant, infiltrating the sounds of local wildlife and environment. This human encroachment can be disorientating, a disruptor of the natural ebb and flow of the soundscapes of the bushland and riverine habitats. This natural ebb and flow, the sounds and textures made by wind and tide, insects and birds, was front of mind when performing and constructing the material presented in Bundanon.

Lengthy music compositions provide opportunities to discover subtle elements of sound that can present themselves, only through deep, focus, or repeated listing. Sometimes these elements are half imagined or generated by circumstances of the individuals' listening experience. Whether on headphones or speakers, revisiting lengthy compositions can present and inspire new ideas or interpretations of the compositions. Tracking these changes can be like noticing new landmarks on a well worn route of a commute. Aspects passed, hardly noticed for dozens of journeys can be revealed unexpectedly. A pleasant surprise to catch something that had slipped past unnoticed on so many previous listens. There’s the mediative aspects too. Allowing the recordings to wash over you, even if more passively absorbing them, can be therapeutic.

The artists acknowledge the Dharawal and Dhurga people as the traditional custodians of the land on which these recordings were made and inspired. We pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

All instruments, field recordings, composition and engineering: Cameron Webb and Matt Rösner.

This work was originally produced in collaboration with the Art Gallery of New South Wales for Volume 2024.