SONIC BLUE

Inspired by the ocean, and incorporating elements of coastal and aquatic sides, Sonic Blue is less an ambient work and more of a piece that captures the many facets of the water. As such, it’s expansive and powerful, often dark and menacing, with ghostly voices rising from the swirling depths.
Each side contains three tracks, but they’re mastered as single pieces. This proves to be an integral part of the listening experience, the sound merging into one vast sonic expanse standing as a fair metaphor for the endlessness of the ocean. It isn’t overstated, however, and the compositions are forged in a fashion that’s subtle and entirely natural sounding, while at the same time highly evocative and occasionally eerie. Sonic Blue is a beautiful and exploratory work, which plunges deep into the unknown alien space here on earth.
– Christopher Nosnibor

For booking inquiries please contact Joanna John / hello@kissthefrog.no

It was clear from the start of the compositional process in February 2013 that “sonic blue” would be an essential piece in Angélica Castelló’s oeuvre. The composer, flutist and electronic sound designer from Mexico, who has is living in Vienna, embarked on an unusual journey with musikprotokoll co-curator Susanna Niedermayr. On the Lofoten archipelago, an island chain along Norway’s northern coastline, they met the biologist and bioacoustics researcher Heike Vester, who founded the organization Ocean Sounds in a fishing village named Henningsvær in 2005. Vester led Castelló and Niedermayr to the whales found in the waters around the Lofoten islands. The field recordings and sounds they collected on these boat trips provide the acoustic framework for “sonic blue”.

The Sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite.
– Jules Verne

A quote above is one of the seven notes Sonic Blue is basing on. Seven chapters about the sea, about its sounds, about desire and passion, about what it gives us and what we give to it.

The subgreatbass Paetzold recorder can produce very diverse noise sounds that are naturally similar to both the sounds of the sea and those of the radio. Sonic Blue brings together, layers and links the underwater recordings Heike Vester made north of the Arctic Circle and Castello’s instrumental sounds, playbacks, electronics, and the sounds of old radios.