- can't hear this without thinking of “conjugaison du timbre” from de natura sonorum which uses just one type of horn for all its sonic material, the saxophone
- in both works horns appear as both transient attacks and beautiful, haunting washes of sound, but in parmegiani the sustained sounds create a kind of undulating continuum, and here they're sequenced in a way that feels more freeform, rolling in and dissipating like the fog banks that skirt the north shore mountains
- that brings us to the quirks of westerkamps’s take: “horns” is interpreted in an unrestricted sense, and it's the ostensibly amusical horns of boats, etc. that imo are used to the most chilling effect here; partway through there's the enigmatic, unexpected addition of water that has a kind of otherworldly delicacy, an asmr quality (and literally a refreshing contrast); another unusual feature is the instrumental part running throughout, playing off the harmonies of the sustained heavily processed sounds very well
- catching unexpected overlap in composers’ sound banks can be great, giving the sound in question a mysterious importance; absolutely love how the same two note foghorn that launches you into Another Place in truax’s "pacific fanfare" starts appearing toward the end (and here, again, evoking the pacific with its gray infinity, ant-sized cargo ships on the horizon, prehistoric canoe routes)
- overall there's a damp, wide open, meditative quality here that i strongly associate with the pacific northwest, but there's also a sort of late-romantic orchestral feeling that perhaps reflects the composer's european roots. a certified banger, i completely agree
(weird to think, hypothetically, my dad could’ve been taking classes from "soundscape composition" luminaries like westerkamp, truax, or schafer around when this was made. hearing stuff like this makes me sad that i didn’t end up going to SFU as well. don't think the culture there is as adventurous as it was back then in the 70s, but the architecture's great. space-age brutalism.)