Open up the insert within Boto [Encantado], the recent Artificial Memory Trace recording by Czechoslovakia-born and Ireland-based sound artist Slavek Kwi, and you'll discover the text shown entirely backwards. Why? Because Kwi wants the listener to hear the recording first minus any pre-conceptions formed by awareness of its sound sources. (No mirror is needed, incidentally, so long as one has computer access, as the text is displayed in right-reading manner at his Artificial Memory Trace site.) In the spirit of the recording, then, one might be advised to refrain from reading further until after one has listened to the forty-minute vinyl album (250 copies)—otherwise, read on.

First of all, Boto is another name for the Amazon River Dolphin or Pink Dolphin; secondly, the album's sounds, creature—mostly dolphins, frogs, bats, and insects—and otherwise, were recorded in August 2007 by a canoe-bound Kwi on the river Jauaperi in Brazil and then assembled into their final form in his Ivy Cottage Studio in Ireland during October 2007. Apparently, Kwi has since 2007 assisted Francisco López in his Mamori workshops in the Amazonian forest, and some of the source material for Boto [Encantado]understandably stems from that experience.

Side one, “Boto pt1 (black water),” opens with the chatter of dolphins followed by sounds of high-pitched bat squeaks, guttural frog croaks, and nocturnal insects. Kwi performs various manipulations on the material, not just blending them together but also transposing the creatures' sounds up and down octaves, and even works in some nocturnal underwater recordings, too. Regardless of the treatments involved, the effect created is one of a natural setting wherein various species co-exist, each with its own distinguishing range of expression. The thrum of insects forms a backdrop to a scattered array of clicks and croaks, and an occasional non-natural element intrudes, too (an electric-power generator in one instance). Befitting a recording that draws to some degree upon night-time episodes, the mood is more peaceful than violent in tone (a side two rupture the exception), with all of it unfolding in patient manner at an even keel.

In its emphasis on re-constructed environmental sounds and musique concrète techniques, the recording in total fits seamlessly into Kwi's previous output (he's been producing work under the Artificial Memory Trace alias for more than two decades). Though it's collagistic in the nature of its assembly (Kwi's own notes indicate that sounds have been isolated, transposed, re-ordered, and sequenced), it sounds largely organic and natural, as if a microphone had been placed along the river's edge for forty minutes to document the sounds of nature and the real-time interactions occuring between its human and non-human species.

  В основе представленного материала лежат полевые записи, сделанные Славеком Кви (Artificial Memory Trace) в 2007 году в Амазонии, путешествие по которой он предпринял вместе с Франциско Лопесом (и который за это самое путешествие пока еще не отчитался парой-тройкой релизов). Бото - это амазонский речной дельфин, довольно специфический, на мой взгляд, подвид, представители которого и сопровождали артистов во время их работы.

     Традиционно, Славек использует для создания своих треков звуки окружающего мира. Традиционно, стараниями музыканта этот самый мир, точнее, его звуковая аура, в итоге оказывается совсем не тем, чего от нее по привычке ждет слушатель. Порой пасторальная размеренность и нарочитая простота, позволяющая в других случаях угадывать источники звука и формировать на их основе в уме привычные пейзажи и образы, содержит массу скрытых ссылок и искажений, из-за которых коллажи «Artificial Memory Trace» могут не вписываться в привычную систему координат, формируя свою абстрактную реальность. Вот и здесь на первый взгляд все понятно - три композиции, построенные на голосах дельфинов и тех специфических высокочастотных звуках, которые они издают, ориентируясь в пространстве, содержат также неугомонный стрекот цикад, крики птиц, голоса людей, шум воды. Первая часть пластинки довольно безмятежна, это кропотливое выстраивание звуковой архитектуры, заполняющей как воздушное, так и подводное пространство. Писк, потрескивание, резкие крики, гул движущихся водяных масс - все это автор собирает из различных фрагментов, прослушивая многочасовые записи в стремлении выхватить из них самое основное. А то, что по каким-то причинам не умещается или не подходит по качеству, Славек прогоняет через фильтры, усиливая или опуская частоты. Вторая сторона альбома некоторое время фиксирует внимание на скольжении каноэ (причем микрофоны закреплены на днище и на веслах) по глади ночной реки со всеми сопутствующими звуками, но очень скоро размеренное течение композиции начинают рвать резкие вставки, перегруженный шум и неопознанное крошево с первой стороны винила. Смешиваются день и ночь, сутки ужимаются до нескольких минут, калейдоскоп звуков становится хаотичным и начинается то, к чему, в принципе,  «Artificial Memory Trace» и стремится - чистое восприятие звука, незамутненное ассоциациями и привычными формами.

      Кви один из лучших мастеров жанра, обладающий уникальным восприятием «конкретной музыки». Так что любителям и знатокам подобных экспериментов прослушивание «Boto [Encantado]» просто необходимо.

Slavek Kwi, aka artificial memory trace, has released this album on ini itu, a specialist vinyl label with a catalogue of some excellent work across several idioms. Boto [Encantado] will be of great interest to the growing band of artists and composers who work with field recordings, especially in wilderness environments and more specifically with the animal world.

The album, explores, the sounds of two river dolphins, the Boto or Amazonian River or Pink Dolphin and the Tucuxi, a smaller estuary dolphin. A complete orchestra of sounds, from frogs, to insects (above and below the water), fish, bats, humans and their machines, can be heard accompanying the main characters. This is of course just what you’d expect in a jungly place like the Amazon – forgive me if I’m misrepresenting the place but I’ve only ever seen it on the telly and listened to albums like this.

The source sounds are given further interest by means of various transformations, set in the context of a composed work. The album cover invites you to ignore the accompanying information sheet. That’s like asking a child ‘not to go in that room’, so I immediately opened out the sheet. Unfortunately it’s been printed as a mirror image so I found myself doing a like Harry Potter impersonation, deciphering the text with a mirror. We are offered a full description of the individual sounds along with full details of the various processes carried out on each sound, most useful in the end as the album certainly invites a degree of detective work. Finally, the kit list reveals a formidable array of high end recording devices and microphones (am I the only field recordist on the planet without a Sound Devices?).

So, dolphins – who doesn’t love them? I always did, though I wavered when I found out how vicious these brutes can be if you’re at the wrong end of the food chain. But with most of us humans they’ve always drawn out some measure of empathy. We always feel that they’re communicating with us, in an absolute sense, requiring no language or other physical mediation. And river dolphins have the added mystery of being able to metamorphose into creatures which can seduce us (and worse!), like the Silkies of Scottish and other Northern European mythologies.

Communication or not, it’s the physicality of the dolphins’ ‘language’ which holds this album together. Throughout the work, Kwi has very cleverly managed to make the most of what I’d consider to be difficult sounds. The clicks and snorts tell us that we’re in the presence of a living creature, but we’d soon tire (at least I would) of a whole album of such sounds. So the artist has stretched and filtered the sounds, drawing out some added interest from their original morphologies, though I’d have welcomed even further experimentation with the degree of timestretching. Iterations become hard to distinguish from short loops, so we have the impression of listening to the randomness of a natural sound world.

Various water clues, the cries and calls of river creatures, fill out the background more generally. This, the combination of different sound sources, is of course a primary compositional technique. Here, Kwi works with contrast to good effect, relying at times on the backcloth of jungly insect sounds, at other times on the simple juxtaposition of a few distinctive brighter timbres, a hissy background, some crackles, a hint of water bubbles. As a device to add interest to the pace and flow of the work, sharp cuts keep us alert, pulling us out of any temptation to succumb to an ambient soundscape in the widest sense of the term.

I’ve stressed that the main problem faced by an the artist who uses restricted resources, despite transformations and despite the added value of conceptual depth afforded by having all sounds taken from a fairly tight location, is that they can lose interest quite rapidly. Where I think that Slavek Kwi has been most astute is in his exploitation of the mimetic attributes of his primary source material. I knew that throughout this work there was a very intelligent mammal ‘there’, always up to something, and I wanted to figure out, or at least it seemed as if I should be trying to figure out what it was he was up to. It seems to me that the artist had this in mind throughout, which would of course be psychologically legitimate.

In summary, Boto [Encantado] is a very well assembled and original work. In his gestural and event led approaches to composition, the artist make best use of an engaging variety of natural localised sound sources, without relying on more broadbrush techniques such as dense polyphony and complex counterpoint. I’d add finally that it gains also from holding a measure of value as a work of documentary art.

On the backside of this LP you can read: 'you have the choice to consult or not some extra information on the insert. This information would influence they way you are experiencing the sounds. No comprehension whatsoever is required to access this work'. Which is actually something I like. You can choose to take in the information, or not. The information on the insert is printed in mirrored writing, so I am sure if its not really necessary to read it anyway. For the reviewer there is of course a small summary on the press text, and I learn that the sound sources are from the Boto, the Amazon River Dolphin or Pink Dolphin (making it one of the first records on ini.itu to move away from the Indonesian context that the previous records have). This record is another fascinating look in the world of Slawek Kwi, the man behind Artificial Memory Trace. Much of his work sounds like a collage of sounds, long moves and some abrupt changes. None of that on this record. The sounds are just in long moves, and it seems a bit silent - of course that is intentional. I have no idea how the Boto sounds in the natural environment, nor any clue of the kind of processing applied by Kwi here, and oddly enough the music here sounds like insects, cicadas, chirping at night. A very meditative work, ambient if you will, slowly moving around, revealing some of its beauty only if you turn up the volume a bit more. Maybe also a strange record, for both Artificial Memory Trace and maybe also for the label. In a way I am reminded of the excellent record by Francisco Lopez for the same label. Quite mysterious, but a very good one. One of things were you keep wondering. (FdW)