Jean-Luc Guionnet creates a portrayal of Lake Annecy near his home as described through its geographical location, and heard in a series of snapshot field recording compositions that describe the environment, fauna, people and civilization that abound around it.
"On the other end of the spectrum, we find the interest Herbal International has in the use of field recordings, with 'the subjective portrait of a geographic entity', and Jean-Luc Guionnet doesn't tell us where this entity in simple layman's terms, but rather via the long latitude and longitude codes, which I believe is Lake Annecy, close where Guionnet lives. He made recordings at the lake between 2004 and 2007 and dedicates the work to fellow field recording artist, Eric LaCasa (see how that 'Lac' fits in there too?).
I can't say I know the lake of Annecy as I hardly celebrate holidays, but then, this is also a 'subjective portrait', as Guionnet says on the cover and having a look on the map it must be a beautiful area, surrounded by mountains and with 38 kilometres of coast line (love live google) I'm sure there is lots of sound to record. Guionnet not just taped a bunch of water, but mostly has water in relation with human activity, so we hear people speaking, cars passing, insects, birds and all such like and it's stuck together like a long collage (seventy-three minutes).
Some of the changes appear to be a bit abrupt I was thinking; they cut out, just like that, and continue with something much more crude. It happens on a few places and I am not sure why Guionnet made these choices. Maybe he feels there is enough carefully constructed releases of field recordings? Maybe this reflects some of the areas more rough paths along the lake? Whatever the reasons might be it makes this release a bit different than your usual field recordings release. It's a more like a bunch of snapshots, small and large stuck together and some of these with rough edges (recording glitches were left in by intent).
Strange release, but one that is quite beautiful."-Frans De Waard, Vital Weekly