Lau Nau, the award-winning Finnish composer and performer, has revealed her latest album, 5×4. Named for the characteristic five-note, four-track playback of the Buchla synthesiser, it represents five years of periodic experimentation with the series 200 machine housed by Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm.
Released by Fonal for Europe and Beacon Sound in the US, the album features eight tracks developed by Lau Nau using only the Buchla, a spring reverb, and her voice. The vinyl release comes packaged in a cover featuring fluorescent inks, and Fonal have a limited edition signed by Laura Naukkarinen with a UV-sensitive pen.
Naukkarinen says of the album:
I’ve been composing for five years at Elektronmusikstudion’s Buchla. When I started the project, I wanted to compose about the change in the living conditions of plankton in the Baltic Sea and the variation in their biomass, but soon the logic and sound of the instrument took me with it. I started composing music for marine life, forgetting all the strict boundaries of the subject. The world of crustaceans and zooplankton opens up in the music: darkness and the light filtered by the eutrophicated sea alternate under the surface, the salinity of the sea varies and the turbidity of the water makes the observations soft and without contours.