On his latest offering for experimental label Dream Disk Lab, Montreal’s Philippe Vandal explores the notion of the umwelt through the medium of sound. The German term, taken up by Heidegger in Being & Time, can be broadly translated as “environment” or “surroundings.” As Vandal is a producer “concerned with the creation of structures and landscapes in a sonic medium,” the umwelt becomes the perceptual space wherein his abstracted productions take on concrete signification.
The four tracks shift in tonality and tempo, signalling perceptual movements in the environment, from the subjectivity of an-‘Other’ organism, regenerating itself in perpetuity. The end result of Vandal’s world-building is visually depicted in works by Syndrom IX who translates Vandal’s sonic data into 3D digital interfaces. The audio/visual components of “Umwelt” are symbiotically formed in their interpretation of a decentralized anthropos in the non-human.
Pre-order “Umwelt” + remixes from Renick Bell & Jesse Osborne-Lanthier here.