Mute Frequencies, my sound art project with Laura Rogatchevskaia, released its Svalbard Soundtracks album today. It’s something we’ve been working on since 2019 and we’re really happy to see that the project found a home on the Flaming Pines label.

Inspired by three silent documentaries about the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Mute Frequencies have produced an infectious, restless and disturbing journey across time and place in these soundtracks for nostalgic tales of human endeavour, and natural beauty.

From dust speckled black and white footage of seal carcasses, craggy fjords and mining towns to the washed out palette of 1970s Soviet canteens for dusty miners the duo of Ilia Rogatchevski and Laura Rogatchevskaia have crafted a poignant album which aims to explore not just a place, but its representation across particular moments in time.

The three works which comprise the album are named for the silent documentaries they aim to soundtrack: Further North, There Is Only the North Pole (1976, USSR), Spitsbergen (1958, Poland), and A Trip To Svalbard (1930, Norway). As we move back in time over the course of the album from 1976 to 1930 we discover very different versions of Svalbard and its inhabitants, both within each piece, and between them.

There are the triumphant synths of Further North, There Is Only the North Pole with its patriotic Soviet miners of the 1970s. While the nature-focused Spitsbergen (1958) with its spectacular landscapes, curious foxes, auks and intrepid explorers moves rapidly from sparse, metallic tinkling to bursts of drums, plucked bass and shakers within just one short section. The final work which places us amid A Trip To Svalbard from 1930 and its stories of hostile weather, hunting, heroic men and mining detonations builds us a world from percussive strikes, vibrating sheets of metal and stabs of industrial synth tones.

Svalbard Soundtracks is a beguiling album which plays with the conventions of nature documentaries, just as it meditates on the particular resonances of nostalgia.

Listen/download here.
The Quietus review here.