A sensual and abstract album by the Finnish composer Marja Ahti, one of the most interesting electroacoustic musicians our time.
"Still Lives" is the third solo full length by Marja Ahti, following a pair of releases on the Hallow Ground imprint. As a collection, it may be seen as a series of studies on the liminality of the listening act and an investigation into the physicality of sound. Ahti forges vivid electroacoustic environments from field recordings, analog synthesizers, acoustic feedback, magnetic tape and digital processing, resulting in a set of articulate, prickly, and surprising compositions. In the artist's words, "These pieces could be conceived of as vanitas paintings of a kind—selections of mundane or archetypal objects, sounds that have their own distinct qualities, but exist only by virtue of being temporary events. From another angle, one could think of them as shrines—objects assembled and set in a particular relationship to each other, charging each other in their given constellations."
Marja Ahti (born 1981) is a Swedish-Finnish composer and sound artist based in Turku, Finland. Ahti works with field recordings and other acoustic sound material combined with synthesizers and electronic feedback in order to find the space where these sounds start to communicate. She makes music that rides on waves of slowly warping harmonies and mutating textures—rough edged, yet precise compositions, rich in detail.
Ahti has presented her music in many different contexts around Europe, in Japan and the United States. She is active in the duo Ahti & Ahti with her partner Niko-Matti Ahti and in the artist/organizer collective Himera.
