Album cover provided.
How do you describe the Holocene, Earth’s current epoch, defined partially by humanity’s impact on the planet? If you are SHHH!! Ensemble, a hardworking, big-minded percussion-and-piano duo, it involves 20 instruments, 150 audio samples, a 120-page score, equal commitment to music and activism, and an hour-long album: An Auditory Survey of the Last Days of the Holocene.
SHHH!! Ensemble’s two members, Edana Higham and Zac Pulak, met at the University of Ottawa and started their duo in 2017 after a residency at the Banff Centre.
Their first album collected music they’d been performing for years, but Last Days of the Holocene is an entirely new composition.
“We wanted to put out something totally fresh,” says percussionist Zac Pulak. “That initial idea collided with us feeling at odds with being a musician and wanting to do something that helped, in some way, or reconciled our feelings about the climate crisis.”
Higham and Pulak commissioned Frank Horvat, a composer known for his activism, to write the piece. “He was the right fit to take on a project like this,” says Pulak of the Toronto-based composer.
In addition to the piano and percussion work—the album features piano, marimba, vibraphone, desk bells, snare drum, cymbals, ratchets, and more noisemakers—what defines the album are its 150 audio samples.
“The samples encapsulate the soundtrack of our current age,” says Pulak. “There’s four parts to the album, and each part explores a different collection of sounds.”
Photo by Alan Dean Photography.
For instance, the first section, “Causes,” features the sounds of ecological devastation, such as clearcutting, mining, factory work, cement trucks, and war.
“By the time you get to the third and fourth part, the soundtrack becomes a lot more positive and uplifting, so the sounds are what we brainstormed as potentially a way forward for the planet,” Pulak says.
Some parts of the album, Pulak says, may sound beautiful, but those beautiful sounds are made by, for example, garbage floating in the ocean.
But there is still beauty in the album. From the chaos of ecological destruction at the front of the album, Last Days of the Holocene slowly moves towards quieter, less busy pieces. Part of the album’s excitement is that it captures both the noisy—big piano chords and drums, chainsaws, car horns, and oil rigs—and the peaceful—marimba, bells, animals grazing, air conditioners.
SHHH!! Ensemble. Photo: Curtis Perry.
“I love having these big setups,” says Pulak. “But if I had to pick a track from the album that might be my favourite, it would be ‘Home Sweet Home,’ track 4 on the album. It’s just for piano and marimba; it’s so simple. I think the electronics part is such a beautiful soundtrack.”
That track takes its name from the audio samples of refrigerators, lawnmowers, dripping faucets, and dryers.
Unfortunately for fans—so, everybody—SHHH!! Ensemble has no upcoming plans to perform Last Days of the Holocene. As Pulak says, the entire first day of recording was spent setting up more than 20 instruments; a live performance would be incredibly demanding.
But for those itching to hear what Pulak and Higham have called “a radical catalogue of our created world’s sounds,” you can catch a special presentation of the album at the winter edition of Pique on December 9. The album will be played over a surround-sound speaker array in a 100-person auditorium.
The Last Days of the Holocene, composed by Frank Horvat and performed by SHHH!! Ensemble, is available for streaming on all platforms. The album will be played as part of Debaser’s upcoming winter edition of Pique.
.gif)
