Federico Durand taps into an otherworld frequency, ascending the astral plane with his antennas wide open as he drifts through the aether or retreating to some honeyed and pine-scented Arcadia, where he erects a ramshackle log cabin and listens to his ringer from a few countries over through the low hum and static of his patched-up transistor radio. Whether inundated by bird calls, showing his work in progress as attentively he applies hammer to nail, echoing the bronze and brass of a far-off marching band or falling as if buoyed by a hammock into the tender arms of a lullaby, the relationship which develops across the five tracks of Té De Flores Silvestres is always simpatico, wires never crossed.
Introspective and eager for that spark of delight, from La Cumbre a small valley town in the heart of Argentina the ambient collagist Durand is responding to the work of Michael Roemers, who began his photographic career by documenting the bands of the Belgian underground as they careened across Europe, before devoting himself to a more personal project, exploring themes of identity, memory and community as he captures the landscapes and traditions of his Wallonia home.
Based out of Brittany, the IIKKI project solicits dialogue between visual artists and musicians, with each result dispatched in the form of two limited-edition physical imprints, a fine art book accompanied by a vinyl record or compact disc. The label project has been on the go since the autumn of 2016, with Té De Flores Silvestres part of a latest drop which also places the electroacoustic pastoralism of Tomotsugu Nakamura in conversation with the pictures of Simone Kappeler, while highlights over the past couple of years include Shadow’s Praise by Akhira Sano and Kurayami by Akira Uchida, where buddhist chants and bristling atmospherics played on the clavichord, saxophone, sutra and shō engaged in moonlit discourse with the gelatin silver prints of Yamamoto Masao.
Conjuring a narrative landscape which is wrought through misty fairytales and far-flung dispatches, the song titles on Té De Flores Silvestres begin with the faux-native ‘Once Upon a Time’ and include messages from the North Sea, names etched into fogged-up glass, the dream of a silk moth and an ode to wildflower tea. Durand lists some of his own predilections as music and gardens, the Romantic poetry of John Keats, stamp collecting and Earl Grey with its rindy bergamot accent, while on the album he plays and triggers a series of analogue synthesizers, tape delay units, radio frequencies, cassette recorders and samplers including the iconic ARP Odyssey and Roland Space Echo, the Korg MS-20, Moog Prodigy and Strymon El Capistan.
