Chthonic, meaning belonging to the earth, mythologically encompassing everything that stirs underground, bringing death and giving life. With five tracks dedicated to geological phenomena such as mountain ranges, sandstorms and earth strata, Lea Bertucci and Lawrence English have not made things easy for themselves on »Chthonic«.
Lea Bertucci and Lawrence English both work at the intersection between environment, spatial perception and music. Bertucci’s »Acoustic Shadows« project, for example, made the hollow sections of the Deutzer Bridge in Cologne resonate. This is known as place-specific music. In 2019, Bertucci and English crossed paths in Rio, discovered their mutual interests and embarked on a musical correspondence that resulted in a darkly droning, shimmeringly ambient album that takes us into the planetary deep time of tectonic shifts.
Bertucci was responsible for recording the acoustic sounds, English for the field recordings. While you can hear the trickling sound of the sandstorm, the hissing of fire and gases, the chthonic is stirred acoustically by the quasi-earthy duration given to the sound textures. Here, acoustic instruments and other sound generators not only form the focus of the listening experience, but to an equal extent their spaces. This is how the breath of the world stirs.
