Simon Fisher Turner & Edmund De Waal A Quiet Corner In Time

Mute are pleased to announce the release of Simon Fisher Turner and Edmund de Waal’s A Quiet Corner in Time on March 27. The album will be available digitally, on white vinyl housed in a gold foil blocked sleeve, and CD. A Quiet Corner In Time began life as a sound work created by composer Simon Fisher Turner for renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal’s installation at the Schindler house in Los Angeles. Fisher Turner and de Waal’s collaboration is a metamorphosis of that work into a standalone album release. The album represents the first time de Waal has collaborated so closely with a musician, and draws Simon Fisher Turner’s past into the present as it references his early sound work for Derek Jarman’s films (he worked with Jarman from Caravaggio up to his final work, Blue). A Quiet Corner In Time brings together Fisher Turner’s field recordings collected with de Waal in Vienna and LA, alongside placed materials and architectural interventions: porcelain vessels, furniture, and vitrines. This huge soundworld combines elements of de Waal’s own history, detailed in his 2010 memoir The Hare With Amber Eyes; the Schindler House itself; its former resident John Cage, along with sounds swapped with Ryuichi Sakamoto. A Quiet Corner In Time is a meditative drama, poised between action and stasis, mischief and grace. Some sounds are drawn out, combed into finely textured drones, while others remain starkly literal. We hear the creaks of rattling doors slamming shut; echoing steps of people moving through long corridors; cups and chatter in Viennese tearooms. The trapped harmonics in a vocal loop fall in, but lift before landing, and the small melodic chiming of porcelain shards resist syncing with the sounds of horses hooves, made percussive like castanets.