SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE Vinilo y CD

Review: Photographer Nan Goldin captured snapshots of inner-city queer sexuality like no other. Famous for her visual chronicling of LGBT subcultures in New York throughout the 1970s and 80s, her work focused on escapism within the real - walking the tightrope of sexual ecstasy over beds of real danger: the twin epidemics, HIV/AIDS and opioid. Film material about her work up until now has largely been limited to the slideshow 'The Ballad Of Sexual Dependency', but 2023 changed that with the documentary film 'All The Beauty And The Bloodshed', which biographically documents Goldin's life and career, homing especially in on her lengthy fight with the orchestrators of the opioid epidemic, the Sackler family. The soundtrack to the film, composed by international experimental sound art group Soundwalk Collective, in collaboration with Dawn Sutter Madell - is an intense, almost heavenly orchestral suite, yet is no less cinematic or righteous. It's tinged with the mood of tearing down an oppressive, parasitic pharmaceutical structure, not least one which still financially feeds the arts world with bloodstained hands.

Review: Soundwalk Collective's their latest project is released by Ubi Ku, a new imprint focused on Buddhism, spirituality and contemporary creation. This immersive album draws inspiration from Tibetan deities and the Himalayan Plateau and is marbled with field recordings made in Upper Mustang, Nepal, in 2016. The collection blends natural sounds, bells, drones and vocals into spine-tingling sermons that also include a Patti Smith contribution to 'Chasing the Demon.' It makes for an expansive, emotive sonic tale that draws on deep research and fieldwork to make for a sublime intersection of sound, environment and spirituality that is utterly profound.