»presage« is an act of sonic foraging: shortwave radio transmissions and field recordings were collected around Helsinki, then assembled and transformed into two long-form pieces. Collecting radio brings with it a particular uncertainty, as signals may have travelled enormous distances before arriving stripped of their context and misted with static, interference, and the imprint of atmospheric conditions. A field recording is a more certain and geographically secure material; however, once removed from its site and placed beside these transmissions, it too becomes unstable. Across »presage«, both kinds of material are treated as partial evidence of somewhere else, and the record feels to me like a worldbuilding exercise, familiar in its materials but somewhat otherworldly in the environment it creates.

Lamberg described the work as static, haunting, droning, and mysterious, utilising sounds that occupy uncertain contexts, and this quality is closely reflected in Minja-Milla Ikonen’s accompanying poem, which moves through hum, skin, shoreline, sand, ribs, forest, asphalt, and wind, allowing one sensation to pass into another in a way that feels akin to the shifting surface of Miska’s composition. Its final suggestion that sounds are always presaging something else offers a useful description of Lamberg’s method: a radio fragment points towards an absent broadcaster, a field recording towards a site that can no longer be entered through the recording alone, while a transformed sound points towards its source and away from it simultaneously.

I say less about this work than I might normally, as its atmosphere is summed up perfectly in the following stanzas, so I will let them speak for the work.

»presage« by Minja-Milla Ikonen

hums against along the outside presaging beneath the skin

does it quicken or fall still the sea breaks upon the small stones of the shore as if it would wash over, but is only soft sand tickling shoulders

pours down upon the surface beneath it into small needle-pricks until grows numb and fills the entire being

rumbles against ribs they are seashell, an echo chamber for listening to the hum

the forest carries it on an oppressively weightless wind that catches hair, the treetops bending down to the roots

footsteps move branches even though walking on asphalt have you noticed sounds lie, always presaging something else

Miska Lamberg is a sound artist and musician whose work reimagines the sounds of everyday environments through field recordings and recycled audio materials. Guided by attentive listening and a minimalist approach to editing, they assemble existing sounds into new contexts that reveal unexpected relationships between place, memory, and perception.