There needs to be a word for it: the feeling of anxious satisfaction combined with a tang of genuine discomfort that occurs when we witness a piece of art that is clearly important, highly accomplished and sometimes scandalous but is not necessarily enjoyable or beautiful in the traditional sense. People must have had this feeling on seeing a Bacon painting for the first time, or reading a novel by Pierre Guyotat (if anyone tells you they actively enjoyed Eden Eden Eden, then they’re best avoided). Often, a piece of creative art is merely aware of its discord with the established sensibilities, but sometimes something comes along that attempts to codify that disruption. Most rarely of all that codification creates, paradoxically, its own kind of beauty. I think this is what’s happening in a small and self-contained way, with Oceans on Azimuth. Billed as ‘an auditory journey into tinnitus’, it is something we can enjoy, in a telling and often highly rewarding way, but not in exactly the same way that we traditionally enjoy music. Music like this almost seems to demand a new language in order to explain itself. In fact, in this particular case, it goes as far as creating that new language itself.
All of which is a long and slightly disorienting way of saying that Oceans on Azimuth is a unique and challenging piece of art. But it might never have existed at all. Lola de la Mata – an artist, composer and curator from London with roots in France and Spain – was advised to give up music when she was diagnosed with severe tinnitus and vertigo, but rather than take the easy option, she decided to create a piece of music that engaged directly with her condition. The resulting album is the deepest of deep dives into tinnitus: the science behind it, the practical implications of living with it, its place in history and art, and the whole strange, disconcerting essence of the condition.
Listening as someone who has suffered – albeit mildly – with both tinnitus and vertigo, my first reaction was one of recognition. But it also made me think back to the first time I noticed a sound that shouldn’t have been there. Presumably, for listeners who have never experienced tinnitus, a first listen will invoke new, visceral and perhaps confusing reactions. Certain passages within the album are so close to real experience that they could be used as a kind of aural medical textbook, a way for doctors to understand their patients and for sufferers to remove the stigma and mystery from their plight.
In fact, de la Mata has actually managed to record the sound of her own tinnitus. The tracks Left Ear and Right Ear, which begin the album’s two sides, were created with the help of biophysicists in a New York sensory cell laboratory. The resulting sounds – typical high-pitched drones – are probably the most accurate renditions of the tinnitus soundworld ever recorded in the name of art. But de la Mata’s goal here isn’t simply to recreate her lived experience. She is an artist and an experimentalist at heart, and those urges are never far from the surface. Artistic and scientific experimentation are two different ways of coming to an understanding about the world and its phenomena; de la Mata reconciles those two divergent paths.
KOH – Klee – uh begins with a slow thud, then introduces icy, almost industrial-sounding groans and the characteristic high background hum. Underlying squeaks, pops and clicks have the feel of dolphin sonar. Stereocilia introduces a voice: a dizzy, warped warble that seems to be seeking a melody to settle on but only ever finds a glitch or a squeal or a void. It sounds like a song haunted by its own sound, and there is something uncanny about it.
The uncanny pervades the whole album, in fact. It might be down to the fact that these sounds, which we know to be human – in some cases very literally the sounds of the human body – sound so alien, so different from our musical or visual or oral language. Lola de la Mata pushes this point to its extreme: her instruments are often structures of glass or metal or ice, and she utilises medical tuning forks and an ear canal-shaped gong. The effect on tracks like PINK Noise is of strings stretched beyond their limits.
The use of the human voice on Oceans on Azimuth is sporadic but meaningful. On PINK Noise it provides the perfect example of de la Mata’s ability to simultaneously create and comment on her own artistic language. Wetware uses Holly+ (the AI version of Holly Herndon’s voice) to build a confounding, discomforting musical landscape. Pearl Reservoir begins with a series of glitched and mauled whispers which crystallise into a kind of poetry. Calibration God is a recording of an interview with a biophysicist undercut by the electromagnetic noises created by his experiments. Taken together, all these strange, human sounds provide evidence for a profound relationship between auditory science, art and chronic illness.
While Oceans on Azimuth might provoke any number of responses, from confusion and fear through to excitement and even security, there is an overriding openness and even a sense of joy in Lola de la Mata’s work. The joy can perhaps be traced back to her decision to create rather than falter in the face of her condition, and the openness stems from this decision too. One of her goals was to work as a catalyst for dialogue about tinnitus, creating a space where sufferers can recognise their condition and begin to live with it in new, creative ways, and where non-sufferers can come to some understanding of how pervasive and difficult and oddly characterful tinnitus can be. Oceans on Azimuth achieves this with clarity and intelligence, and always with an eye on experimentation. Never an easy listen, it somehow manages to become a welcoming and even comforting one.
Oceans on Azimuth is out on May 8th.
Order via: https://loladelamata.bandcamp.com/album/oceans-on-azimuth
Album Launch Event:
May 15th at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery – University of Greenwich,10 Stockwell St, London SE10 9BD
Details: https://ra.co/events/1885591