Born in Sweden but now resident in Germany, sound artist and composer Hanna Hartman has released some impressive work over the past few years, and Ailanthus continues along the same road as 2005's Longitude / Cratere (Komplott) and 2002's Färjesänger (Elektron), crafting subtle, superbly recorded musique concrète that makes little attempt to disguise either its source sounds (birds, insects, wind, water and various instruments and voices are all clearly identifiable) or the treatments they undergo (backwards soundfiles, loops), without ever sacrificing ambiguity, surprise and formal complexity. It's closer in spirit to Ferrari than Henry, accessible without being naïve. Att fälla grova träd är förkippat med risker ("felling trees is fraught with risks"), which was awarded the prestigious Karl Sczuka Prize in 2005, is a ravishing piece of cinema for the ear, creaks and twangs alternating with blasts of radio, cries, coughs and crunches. On Wespen Vesper, tiny shuddering consonants are juxtaposed with buzzing insects, twittering birds and smatterings of wickedly funky claves. Plätmäs features disturbing metallic scrapes, looped seagulls and what sounds like someone merrily crunching apples. Musik För Dansstycket Jag Glömmer Bort is more rhythmically regular (perhaps due to the fact that it was commissioned by a ballet company) and harmonically coherent, the pitches of its percussive rattles cunningly mirrored by the clucking of hens and piano and string samples. Hartman never overloads her textures - there's plenty of silence to frame the exquisitely precise samples - but curiously enough this only serves to highlight the complexity of the isolated sounds themselves, and the music seems to last longer than it actually does. The longest of the four works on the disc lasts just over nine minutes, and the album as a whole clocks in at just 28'21". But what glorious, action-packed minutes they are.
