Pei: Envision Normality, Kwan Yin CD

The following review is also published in the June 2008 issue of The Wire magazine

Resembling a scrapbook of snippets from a newly acquired portable minidisc recorder, Taiwanese sound artist Pei’s (aka Wen Liu) album Envision Normality collects together recordings made mostly during a summer in Taipei. The tracks are rough and unprocessed recordings of a disparate array of sonic moments, edited in a harsh and uneven manner with most of the CD dedicated to the hard white noise of crickets chirping, thunderstorms, rain and other aural ephemera.
Opening with the minute-long "Changing Root", a glitchy looping electronic drone and by far the most ‘musical’ segment of the release, the track fades into the sound of a shovel digging into dirt, setting a leisurely back-garden theme that continues throughout the album. On first listen the album seems banal in the selection of recordings used. This is due to Pei’s choice of recordings sounding much like a DIY version of a sound library’s “general ambient” section. With a closer listening through headphones, one can discern layers of sounds within the recordings and behind the lo-fi hiss of the everyday soundscape. On several tracks one can just make out the ghostly noises of people speaking, dogs barking, the ribbit of frogs, running water and the artist’s breath. In fact, the sounds can be so faint it’s doubtful that some of them happened, but were the result of auditory hallucination caused by an over-concentrated listening.
There are several interesting compositional moments along the album. Where Pei splices together a quick staccato succession of what sounds like children playing in a water park which then rapidly shifts into the modulating sound of a radio playing in a car. Also notable are the sharp transitions in volume and proximity with the recorded subject that creates a shifting “point of view”. Overall, the effect can be cinematic, and is admirable for the simplicity of it's idea. Utilising a basic editing technique that seems to rely on the odd croaks and groans found submerged within the recordings, Pei creates a bare narrative structure that gives the album cohesion.
The enthusiastic idiosyncrasy of the sounds and the composition is endearing, but it is a stretch to say that what Pei produces are compositions. Rather it would be more appropriate to call the album a collection of sounds selected and arranged in a highly personal way. Which is quite a mouthful considering that what this actually means is that listening to Envision Normality ends up as the aural equivalent of experiencing a friend's summer holiday snaps.