When one is asked to summarize one’s travels, for Verónica Cerrotta a month in the city of Valparaíso and a pair of festival appearances, one may respond in varying fashions. On Álbum de Viaje, Cerrotta offers a pair of side-long soundscapes; one travels through time and space, while the other condenses time. Together, they offer complementary ways of preserving experience through sound.
The pieces of “Valparaíso” were collected as one might collect souvenirs: scrap by scrap, sound by sound. At first there is only a background hum, then the tapping and swirling of solid objects: metal, plastic, concrete? Then the first confident splash, accompanied by the sounds of workers by the sea. Traffic builds as the city comes to life. A child is playing in the distance, along with whistles and a brass symphony of undulating horns. If only all traffic were this way, offering something good along with the bad! The brass gives way to tinkling wind chimes, as one imagines the amalgamation of all the chimes from all the houses, ringing in time. The tin sound of a radio breaks through, the worker’s best friend.
A massive wave bisects the composition, prefacing the appearance of sea lions and hungry gulls. As the velocity of the waves decreases, so does the biophony. A plane passes overhead, seemingly close. Church bells toll, marking time for the dockworkers. Glorious rain on tin roofs creates a percussionist’s paradise, followed by found objects used as percussion. Cerrotta has turned her idyllic month into a photo album of sound.
“Otras Ciudades” takes a different approach, traveling backwards in time as it traces two festival appearances with Cerrotta’s band a.hop. “The world is ending,” an unidentified narrator begins; but in truth it is not; it is instead unwinding. A happy get-together in Berlin is accompanied by more church bells, louder than before: in this instance the chronic marker is questioned as the very concept of time is challenged. Small groups of people mill about; a dog barks; the bells continue to ring. The soundscape will eventually move through nations as well as days.
The second movement begins with footsteps, first on solid ground and then seemingly through fallen leaves. Who can resist a good leaf patch? Even the nearby birds are laughing. Snippets of conversation are heard, dissolving into patches of music, a local musician, and even more bells. A barge approaches, sounding a warning. The water in this piece connects to the water in the first. Ironically, in concert people come to hear Cerrotta, where Cerrotta shares what she has heard, which in some cases may be the sounds created by audience members themselves.
Viaje is a word with various interrelated meanings: trip, travel, journey. Álbum de Viaje honors all three. In the 17th minute, one hears the sound of what may be a map unfolding: a tactile way to approach travel. By the end, because the chronology is reversed, Cerrotta has not returned home, but remembered who she was before she left, when the map was just a map and each sound now heard was only a sound imagined. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 