What a beautiful, magical recording, washing up on our shores after spending six years in the tumultuous ocean, tossed here and about, a message in a bottle, a bottle containing the sound of the sea. Drift is a film in which nothing seems to happen, or everything happens, depending on one’s perspective; there’s a narrative framework, but within Helena Wittman’s frame all is water, imagination and dream. Holding the vessel together is Nika Son‘s score, which is her own score, her own music, but also the ebb and flow of the waves, the gurgling and lapping, imitated by light electronics, which were once part of the Son / Wittman installation Wildness of Waves.
The protagonists meet, share stories and part; one begins a solo journey around the Atlantic while the other returns home. For more on the plot, see this excellent review by Slate, but fair warning ~ spoiler alert, if one can truly spoil an abstract film. The trailer offers a reasonable idea of what viewers might expect, while the longer excerpt (“The Ocean”) conveys the film’s impressionistic spirit. Is the seafarer asleep or awake? Is the ocean metaphor or companion? Will she and her companion meet again across the sea, carried by the currents?
The film is a mirror, the ocean is a glass, the score is a spyglass. Son begins not with a lull, but a bustle: passing cars, a buzzing motorcycle, a bicycle bell, a foghorn, passing conversation. One longs to escape such sounds and get to the sea. Yet after weeks at sea, one longs to escape the water and embrace the shore, sonic irritants transformed into aural treasures.
Son’s recordings reflect the creak of the hull, the lap of the bilge, the placidity and the tumult in turn. One can track the journey by the longitude and latitude of the titles. Midway a shift ensues: the wet buoy of “wildness of waves I,” which begins with percolation and ends in undulation. Toward the end, “reality” seeps back in, although by this juncture reality seems to be a contract; perhaps better to say the perception of reality emerges as the soundscape shifts from electronic back to hydrophonic. Even this proves an illusion as the subsequent piece sails in the opposite direction.
The arrival of birds seems a fever dream; can shore really be this close? The gulls seem agitated, unfriendly. Then there are voices, and again the sound of industry, a rough reminder. No, on the LP at least, we are still at sea. A similarly disorienting effect surfaces in the sound of crickets, a terrestrial memory or a stop at port. In “30°53’47.0”N 46°52’31.8”W,” one recalls the difficulty of distinguishing between the sounds of brine shrimp and a crackling fire. When a howling wind arises, one fears not only for the safety of the sailor, but for the long-delayed reunion, worrying that the ship may be blown off course, the relationship derailed.
The fears are dispelled in the final track; even without visuals, Son has woven a tale of her own. Wittman’s film, for the most part, dispels with words; Son’s album, save for the art, dispels with images. A third aspect, the words of Theresa George, can be parsed sans image or sound. When these extractions are once again combined, the effect is exponential. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 