A really nice compilation put together by Geoff Dugan back in 1997. All the pieces have something to do with the abandoned McCarren Park pool in Greenpoint Brooklyn, though if i hadn't read that fact in the liner notes i wouldn't know it. I've always thought that compilations should be like good radio shows, introducing the listener to unknown work from artists familiar and not, and this one fits that bill.

We start with Gen Ken Montgomery's "Washing The Hare", field recordings with an odd stuttering quality joined by a child's song about- you guessed it- washing the hare/hair. Chop Shop contribute shifting, mysterious drones and compiler Geoff Dugan profers a nice field recording wherein the recordist slowly gets into the act, shuffling, sniffing and rustling. Francisco Lopez' "untitled piece from McGarren Park" starts in near silence and builds slowly to a chopped rumble with long echoey horns or bells. Sean Meehan's "Neglect" is all bowed or scraped metals (cymbals?) in a resonant space, really beautiful combinations of overtones. His page in the accompanying booklet looks like it might be a graphic score.

Brian Conley's "Empty" sounds like just that, sudden sounds popping through nothing and John Hudak's "Amniotic Suspension" is processed sounds of what may be water or fetal heartbeats rising and falling in pitch and thrown about. If Bwana contribute a percussion/synth/tape improvisation that's well paced and spidery and Pat Courtney winds up with could well be a recording of a crowded public pool, though oddly i don't hear any water. Maybe that's the point.

If this HAD been a radio show, I wouldn't have turned off the radio.