Sonic Archaeologies

Ros Bandt’s electro-acoustic pair Mungo and Thrausmata treat land and ancient Greek text as sonic archaeology. Award-winning works made in the studios of West Deutsche Rundfunk, Cologne.

Ros Bandt aeolian harps, renaissance recorder, slide whistle, medieval psaltery, sampler, vocoder, fairlight, fossils, kangaroo bones, shells, sand, sound installation
Arthur McDevitt ancient greek text reader
Alice Kelly mutti mutti elder voice

Ros Bandt composer

Archaeology uncovers remains and remnants, usually fragments of an unknown whole. Applied to sound—invisible and time-dependent—the questions sharpen. Can we hear the past, and if so how? Are those sounds whole or broken? Is it even philosophically possible to rehear a moment that can never be repeated?

The listening environment shifts constantly: different acoustic spaces, different soundscapes, and a listener in the twenty-first century far removed from the Homeric world or the people of ancient Lake Mungo.

Sonic archaeology takes remnants of ancient language and ancient land as they exist now and rebuilds them as modern electro-acoustic celebration. From the giant aeolian desert harp of Mungo to the ancient Greek texts of Thrausmata, Sonic Archaeologies tries to re-sound antiquity so that some of its essence may be rekindled.

These award-winning compositions were created in the studios of West Deutsche Rundfunk, Cologne.

Reviews

Sonic Archaeologies takes us to the heart of what music is about: the sounding and re-sounding of trans-temporal, cross-cultural, past and present human experience.

— Kipps Horn, ASME Journal

[Thrausmata's] collaged sound sources provide a rich web of intertextual interplays with the literal and symbolic content of the ancient texts ... the evocative sound of the aeolian harp [in Mungo] ... it's worth hearing the piece for this element alone ... satisfying listening

— Michael Hannan, MCA Music Forum

[Thrausmata] was a startling and intriguing essay in marrying contemporary sounds with a 'dead' language and exploring their mutual resonances.

— Clive O'Connell, The Age

This disc chronicles the work of a true original in Australian music ... [in] Thrausmata ... Bandt aims at a kind of excavation of the imagination, re-creating imagined past sound worlds and setting them against a surviving text ... the demeanour is fresh, inventive and engaging ... Mungo is quite the opposite: a still soundscape evoking vast, sparely punctuated expanses of time and space ... it is one of the most thoughtful Australian landscape pieces I have come across.

— Peter McCallum, Sydney Morning Herald

Artists

Ros Bandt

Ros Bandt is an Australian composer, performer and sound artist whose work joins ancient instruments, environmental sound and live electronics in spatial music, installation and sound sculpture.

Audio previews

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Tracks

Thrausmata Ros Bandt

Parmenides Fragments 1 & 5 :52
Homer Iliad XI 618-652 5:47
Sappho Fragment 1, Realisation 1 2:48
Bacchylides Ode 5 16-49 3:57
Sappho Fragment 1, Realisation 2 3:45
Euripides Hippolytus 1199-1233 3:37
Democritus Fragment 9 (DK 68A, 128) 3:34
Mungo Ros Bandt 32:48

Performers

Ros Bandt · aeolian harps, renaissance recorder, slide whistle, medieval psaltery, sampler, vocoder, fairlight, fossils, kangaroo bones, shells, sand, sound installation
Arthur McDevitt · ancient greek text reader · tracks 1–7
Alice Kelly · mutti mutti elder voice · track 8

Where to listen

Sonic Archaeologies is available for streaming through Spotify and Apple Music. It can also be purchased through the iTunes Music Store.

Sonic Archaeologies is available as a CD. It can be purchased online through Buywell Music or the Australian Music Centre which both offer online ordering.