The past three entries of this log were about three vastly different songs, from different times and people. However, what unites all of them is that what we hear will be classified as "music" by the vast majority of people, was highly likely made as "music" by the creators, and wouldn't happen if the creators didn't make it. But what if there's music around us that we just can't easily hear? John Griznich, an artist and a researcher of sorts, provided us with a prime example of this sort of music - played by a thawing lake.

This kind of art is not exactly novel, since it already has its own genre name: "field recording". What matters, though, is the exact recording methods, places and ideas behind the said recording. This stuff reminds me of found material art in how instead of trying to create art from the ground up one finds and carefully observes or creatively presents the things that are already happening in the world with no one paying attention.

John and i share a bit of a story. A good few years ago he bought a delay module from me. At that moment i thought of him as just another customer, but with a twist: the first one ever from Estonia, where i happen to reside both back then and at the time of writing this. The address looked iffy and the postal code was strange, so i looked up a location. It turned out to be a farm in the middle of almost nowhere towards the east. Half a year later, John emailed me asking if i want to run a workshop at the Estonian Arts Academy, where he apparently was head of the new media department. That's how i became a teacher and John became my friend. He's quite ingenious with his art, and often undersells it. And apparently, one of the reasons i had to ship a module to ruch a remote place is because that place is full of natural phenomena for him to play with.

The track of today's entry is recorded with a bunch of special microphones and other niche equipment at Lake Peipsi at the very east of the country, known across the border to the east as "Chudskoye Lake" - "chudy" being an old slavic name for Estonian tribes that shares a root with "chudo" - "a miracle". And in spring of 2024, the lake certainly performed a miracle of sound that mr. Griznich was just in time to capture.

A frozen lake gives an impression of static dormancy. However, ice and water are actually very fluid and chaotic - especially when the lake starts thawing. The five tracks sound radically different, and my pick is simply because the texture scratches my brain the most. It sounds watery at times, as expected. But mostly it sounds nothing like my idea of "melting ice sound". Wet alienish non-musical events intertwine with thuds and zaps that sound almost as if they were treated with some digital delay, all on the backdrop of the underwater hum, likely impacted by the wind from above the surface. It's impressive how this music (or non-music, as the album tags put it) is hidden from us simply becasue we usually never check for it!