Joshua Bonnetta // Innse Gall LP+BOOKLET

A record released by Canadian sound artist Joshua Bonnetta in November 2022 from French experimental label Shelter Press.

Includes two deep listening field recording collage tracks.

60 page booklet andViewing code for "The Two Sights" essay, postcard and video work by Erika Balsomis included.Below is an explanation by the label.

Bonetta uses film, photography, and recordings to engage in intimate, generative dialogue with one another.Photography shows the proximity and urgency of sound, sound shows the need for moving images, and film harnesses the eyeball to propel the sonic realm forward.The elements that make up his work, whether film, record, or photography, are both autonomous and interrelated. - Artists and objects act as subjective lenses, exploring the nature of human experience and the diverse and potential psychological realities of inherited histories, cultures, places and self-connections.It is a reactive practice that emerges from encounters with places and situations, and seeks to bring order to the chaotic abstraction that amazes the mind and leads to legends and myths.

Bonetta's works are not in the abstract and "pure" tone state of experimental music "free from individual tastes and memories (psychology)" pursued by Concrete and John Cage, but by-products of sound collage. There is, however, a deep sympathy with Luc Ferrari's concept of 'anecdotal music', capable of explaining and preserving the social and autobiographical contexts of the materials and recordings and their meaning dimensions.Rather than forcing stereotypes about artists, listeners are encouraged to construct their own stories.This is two audio compositions Bonetta composed from field recordings made in Barra, Bernelei, North Uist, Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 2017-19. The same is true for Strangers.

Drawing on Bonetta's fascination with sound as a primary means of investigating places and people, Innse Gall 'The Islands of the Strangers' leaks from hydrophones and peatlands recorded over long periods of time in lobster purse seines. We focus on a wide range of sonic material, including gas recordings, interview snippets, shipping sounds, songs, and field recordings of seals, quail, sandpipers and other elements of the natural world.The two works on this album, Innse Gall I and Innse Gall II, are painstakingly collaged in exploring the interconnected acoustic ecosystems of these diverse elements that make up the island. Ironic narratives embedded in ancient and modern landscapes are contrasted with the fading Gaelic oral traditions that retain their memories, resulting in deep, aural reflections on the relationship between story, environment, and their influence on each other. .

Innse Gall "The Islands of the Strangers" draws deep poetry, beauty and meaning from the everyday, step by step reexamining the conditions of field recordings and sound collages.

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Edition of 500.

• includes an essay by Erika Balsom
• Includes a 60-page booklet
• Includes a postcard to download the film "The Two Sights"

Shelter Press:

" Joshua Bonnetta - Innse Gall 'The Islands of the Strangers'
Bridging acoustic ecology and interdisciplinary creative practice, Joshua Bonnetta returns to Shelter Press with Innse Gall 'The Islands of the Strangers', his second LP for the label. Recorded and assembled between 2017 and 2020 and acting as a companion piece to Bonnetta's film, An Dà Shealladh 'The Two Sights', these two interrelated side-long works - Innse Gall I and Innse Gall II - respectively deploy a rigorous approach to field recording and auditory phenomena, promoting the complex relationship between landscape, place, language, and culture in the Outer Hebrides, where both the film and album's source material were gathered. Representing a radical rethinking of the potential of sound collage, Innse Gall 'The Islands of the Strangers', is issued by Shelter Press as a limited edition, deluxe vinyl LP, housed in a 7mm reverse-board outer sleeve and a heavyweight reverse-board inner sleeve, accompanied by a sixty page booklet containing extensive photographic studies made for 'The T wo Sights' by the artist and an essay by Erika Balsom, as well as a postcard to download the film An Dà Shealladh 'The Two Sights', generously provided by Cinema Guild, and Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst.
Since the late 2000s Canadian artist Joshua Bonnetta has cultivated a highly singular interdisciplinary creative practice that spans film, video, sound, performance, and installation. In addition to his previous LP on Shelter Press, Lago, he has released albums on Senufo Editions, Experimedia , and Canti Magnetici, and exhibited at The Berlin Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, ICA London, MOMA, The New York Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, among others.

Bonnetta's use of film, photography, and sound recording operate in close, generative dialog with each other; a photograph indicating the proximity and urgency of sound, a sound indicating the necessity for moving image, and a film utilizing the ocular to forward a realm of sonority. Each discreet element of his output - a film, record, photograph, etc. - is regarded as autonomous while interconnected with, and dependent on, other realms of perception and experience; the artist and object acting as a subjective lens, inquiring after the nature of human experience and the diverse, latent psychological realities at juncture of inherited history, culture, place, and self. abstractions that cause the mind wonder, and give way to legend and myth.

While very much the byproduct of sound collage, rather than the states of abstraction and 'pure' sonority most often pursued by musique concrète, or an experimental music “free of individual taste and memory (psychology)”, as pursued by John Cage, Bonnetta's work displays a deeper sympathy with Luc Ferrari's notion of 'anecdotal music', in which the social and autobiographical contexts of the source material / recordings - with their embedded dimensions of meaning - is accounted for and retained. This is no less the case for Innse Gall 'The Islands of the Strangers', comprising two audio works constructed by Bonnetta from field recordings made on the Outer Hebrides islands of Barra, Berneray , North Uist, Harris, & Lewis between 2017-19.

Drawing upon Bonnetta's fascination with sound as a primary means to survey place and people, Innse Gall 'The Islands of the Strangers' draws upon a vast range of sonorous material: hydrophone recordings made over extended periods in lobster creels and of gases escaping a peat bog , interview fragments, and field recordings feature capturing the sounds of maritime industry, song, seals, corncrake, snipe, and other elements of the natural world. Meticulously collaged and reworked within an exploration of the interrelated acoustic ecology of these diverse elements of the islands ' make-up, the album's two works - Innse Gall I and Innse Gall II - bristle with the subcutaneous narratives embedded within these ancient and modern landscapes, played against the disappearing Gaelic oral traditions which hold their memories, resulting in a deep, auditory reflection on the relationship between narrative, environment, and the reciprocal influences they exact upon one another.

Challenging the perceived boundaries and interconnectedness of place and occupation - to what extent the perception of an environment is modeled by language, culture, and myth, or that the environment underscores the very becoming of those things - Bonnetta's Innse Gall 'The Islands of the Strangers ', draws profound poetry, beauty, and meaning from the everyday, rethinking the terms of field recording and sound collage every step of the way. "

Artist: Joshua Bonnetta

Label: Shelter Press