Surface noise is the inspiration for this recording by Anri Sala. “I wanted to compose a soundtrack that mostly sounds, when played on the vinyl, like one is only listening to the physical attributes of the medium itself: the sound of the static crackling of the vinyl played by the stylus. As if it was contact music. However, in the course of the composition…the crackling starts to evolve, gradually taking the shape of other sounds. One hears hints of percussion and sometimes even distant sounds, like fragments of ghostly music.”

Sala begins with the sound of surface noise and slowly superimposes characteristics of other sounds upon it. At the initial moment that you drop the needle onto this record, perhaps you will confuse the record’s actual surface noise with the recording of surface noise inscribed in its grooves. But soon the ever-present scratching, popping, and crackling starts to resemble rain, or footsteps, or music. “Hence, when the vinyl will play, the ensuing crackle of the stylus…little by little will develop to suggest a composition, a rhythm, a journey, perhaps a tale.

Anri Sala was born in 1974 in Tirana / Albania, he lives and works in Berlin. His oeuvre explores the relationships between music and literature, architecture and film, interleaving qualities of different media in both complex and intuitive ways to produce works in which one medium takes on the qualities of another. Sala has taken part in many group exhibitions and biennials, including the Havana Biennial (2015); Sharjah Biennial (2013); Gwangju Biennale (2012); Documenta 13 (2012); São Paulo Biennial (2010); Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007); Berlin Biennale (2006). In 2013, Anri Sala represented France in the Venice Biennale with his exhibition Ravel Ravel Unravel.