Layered sounds that call for deep personal reflection.

Imagine traveling off the known path and finding oneself alone, surrounded by unfamiliarity. The senses heighten, listening intently to each echo, chime and hum. All around, subtle signs emerge, whispers, movements, fleeting hints that draw careful attention. And as each is approached and passed, they guide the way in rediscovering the familiar.

This is the feeling of Kimi Recor and Marc Elsner’s immersive album, I. 

Kimi Recor is an artist, sound therapist and educator based in Berlin. She has been heavily inspired by sound baths, frequency effects on the nervous system and other methods of sound therapy, which shows throughout this album’s. Marc Elsner, also based in Berlin, is a producer, mixer and master engineer. 

The two worked together to create I, experimenting with different vibrations and frequencies to create this “multi sensory sound and performance installation” (via Bandcamp). 

Every track on I is full of different layers of sound that are amplified at different moments to create a sense of space, changing direction and depth, as if the sound is wrapping around the listener or being taken directly through the audio itself.

The ambiguity in each layer of sound invites the listener to focus on individual elements and reflect on what each one personally evokes. The one layer that is most consistent throughout the entire album is the droning, humming undertone. This is an element that feels as if it is below with the higher pitched elements above, and each in the middle as different elements that are closer or further away from the listener depending on their individual volume, tone and echo. 

In the third track on the album, “Turiya,” you begin to more clearly hear what seems to be a voice- shrill and phantom ringing over the rest of the elements in the piece. Soon after, this is met by what seems to be a whispering instrument reminiscent of an organ, playing notes lightly and creating even more depth to the track. 

The mystery of the sounds in this album evokes a questions of how each individual listener may experience them, and what resonates differently in each. 

I is a composition that stimulates and exercises the brain, creating the sensation that the listener themself has wandered astray to find their self on a mysterious journey. Along the way, listening intently to each element around them to stay in tune with hints of life, danger and the unknown as they attempt to reach familiarity.