wanda group: ornate circular

Wanda Group valiantly returns for their third release on NNA Tapes. Since the project’s debut “Bass Urine” in 2011, Louis Johnstone seems to have worked diligently to eradicate all traces of traditional “music” from his work, leaving behind only the acousmatic sounds of life itself, deepening the journey down the rabbit hole of musique concrete. Although “Ornate Circular” seems to be constructed from various tape and field recordings, electronic signal processing, radio interference and digital effects, Wanda Group refuses to make these elements the emphasis of the work or give any clues as to their origin. What Johnstone presents us with instead is purely the creative manipulation of the sounds of earthly existence, void of context or traditional musical structure. As humans, it is our nature to want to assign a reality-based narrative to sounds we cannot see the source of, but Wanda Group denies us this through the complete deconstruction and rearrangement of everyday sounds, creating a totality of abstractionwhich nullifies context altogether.