Artist: Marja-leena Sillanpää
Title: They Know We Are Listening
Format: Vinyl 12″
Label: Firework Edition Records
Cat nr: FER1130
Genre: Noise
Tracklist:
| A1 | Untitled | |
| B1 | Untitled | |
| B2 | Untitled | |
| B3 | Untitled | |
| B4 | Untitled | |
| B5 | Untitled | |
| B6 | Untitled |
THEY KNOW WE ARE LISTENING (all the sounds in universe) illuminates the past and a possible future in interaction with what is called now. This is mainly something that we do not hear, which apparently has been lost, but which still subsist. It is basically a presence of the absent where one sound seems to be running out into a new sound and in the end all the sounds that existed will from this moment exist together.
As a child I was troubled with a sensitive ear with reoccurring ear infections. As a sign of that I already at young age had an unusual hearing sensitivity and thus predisposed for inner communication. My surroundings still tend to perceive my hearing as impaired, but the focus is really somewhere else. One of the doctors who examined my ears gathered the colleagues who were standing in line in order to peek in: Hovering over roofs. Hovering straight off a façade. Hovering above a street. Hovering with birds. Hovering together over a field, above the earth or above them all. To elevate or to fall, not to stay on the surface, gives us the opportunity to understand what is happening in different places simultaneously. If we close our eyes and make an effort, we can feel the ground, far away, deep. Earth dries up under our feet. All organisms currently on earth grows from other organisms, and now we can hear the quiet drama. With the dead we do not need to talk (we listen for hours and rarely turn pages). Slowly the sound disappears into itself in a cycle. A frozen moment for the listener, and then perhaps never again.
They glide into our thoughts with an internal propelling force. There is always a choice, but I am usually available for contact. A conversation is a part of a personal searching, but also of a near enough scientific attitude, that is to say that I am consistently prepared to reevaluate the discoveries, observations or hypotheses. New breaths that transport thoughts to another dimension. Completely normal dreams are in fact a variety of encounters with the dead and to sleep at night is a type of preparation for our own coming death. Fundamentally, every human is larger than their situation with an indescribable sense of eternity. By eternity, an unending time-space is implied, perhaps it means an unending existence in which we never cease to exist and death (as we often regard it) is absent.
Now and again we gain a sense of clarity, a sense of having understood everything. It is gratifying in the grand, but also on a microscopic level. When we gain contact we never know how long it lasts, but apparently it works in such a way that we only hear those we for different reasons need. It starts prior to the shadows.
The others have arranged the order according to my wishes. I have definitely included the universe together with incomplete and oftentimes unfinished fragments. The rest is gathered from material found at different moments, which they may or may not have included. I like to add that it can be regarded as a clue to this work and is simultaneously a key to whoever yearns for a greater understanding of other truths about our existence in this universe.
Suddenly we notice that time moves backwards, that all sounds hastily halts and ends up behind a curtain. Like a soundless roar. A life sign. A murmur.
Like a scratch on the surface of an old vinyl.
M-l Sillanpää
Produced with contribution from Stiftelsen Längmanska kulturfonden in Sweden.
FER1130 (p)&(c) marja-leena sillanpä¨ Stockholm 2019
