Ultra subtle elision of field recording and original synthesis by a collaborator of Angel Bat Dawid and John Herndon, also named one of Chicago’s 50 best musicians.
Return & Recovery is Norman W. Long’s quietly compelling study of the greyfield sites that fringe Chicago, and the nature that is slowly returning to them. “Greenfield” is a term used to describe “underused” real estate, defined by seas of flat empty asphalt and concrete where the local steel industry once stood. Norman hails from Calumet, Il, south of Chicago, proper, where greyfield sites line the lakeside and incur on local marshes filled in with slag from the steel industry.
In an act of deep topographical sound art, Norman invites us to reflect on that sort of liminal zone between defunct industry and nature that lives next to him, and us, with a 17 minute work that blurs lines between documentary and sound art, ostensibly appearing as a snapshot of the site, replete with a haze of crickets and sweet bird calls, but also revealing a sliver of original music seeping thru around the mid-way point that feels to accompany the piece’s transition from day to dusk, along with its subtly effected contrails lending a smudged, melancholy appeal.
—boomkat.com
