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Eco-Acoustic Compositions is perhaps the most multi-faceted disc I’ve heard in years of exploring this field.  David Monacchi takes us on a very personal journey, into both the diverse sonic world itself (with pieces focusing by turn on water, insects, birds, whales, and rainforests), and the creative possibilities available to composers inspired by these voices around us.  Each track offers an clearly distinct approach to working with field recordings and studio/electronic manipulations.  We hear extensive and primary use of filters and spectral envelopes in the first track, playback of very focused recordings into resonant spaces (cisterns) on track two, time-expansion so as to enter into bird song and human musical responses on track three. David then explores a simpler and to my ears most compelling approach, his reconstructions of largely naturalistic sound material on the final two tracks. Through the course of the disc, Monacchi demonstrates his mastery of an impressive range of compositional techniques, with each successive track peeling away a bit  of technological filtering, delivering us in the end into the heart of the Amazonian sound-field, with a subtle echo of his studio presence lingering within an aural space that is enriched by its suggestive (if illusory) “purity” and utterly enlivened by his subtle re-interpretation of this primal rainforest soundscape.

David’s approach is manipulated, but never manipulative.  While moving surely beyond a naïve or complacent reliance on the natural soundscapes “as they are,” and exploring the aural edges and depths of the material with studio extrapolations, the work never becomes obtuse or pointedly experimental for its own sake, and always retains a fundamental sense of wonder about both sound itself, and the natural voices that underlie the work.  Throughout, we sense the hours and weeks David has spent in the field, experiencing these primary soundscapes from within; this depth of engagement informs the choices he makes back in the studio, and help keep the work from slipping over a treacherous edge that less grounded experimental soundscape composers can fall prey to.

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