Sferics by Cecyl Ruehlen

All sounds composed, performed and engineered by Cecyl Ruehlen
Produced for CD + Digital Release on
HARMONIC OOZE RECORDS
Tucson, Arizona USA / Autumn 2023 / HZ no. 019
harmonicoozerecords.bandcamp.com
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Ionospheric Weather / Low Frequency Radio Transmission Samples taken from compositions the artist gathered out in the field with an impromptu, drone-radio-tower between Autumn 2017 and Winter 2019 throughout New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

Field recordings and situational documents recorded in the Coconino National Forest surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona, Spring 2022.

Live performance recordings taken from Westminster College Recital Hall, Salt Lake City, Utah, Winter 2023.

Concept, studio recordings, auxiliary performance, post-production composing and engineering developed at Terminal Peninsula Studio,
San Francisco, California, Winter / Spring 2023.
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2022 was a shit show. I moved three times. I lived in San Francisco for a sudden moment in time. About eight months to be exact. But I jumped through a wormhole . An atmospheric anomaly that rippled across and through my familial center, taking us into a chaos of cardboard boxes, temporary living spaces, a collapse in our art practices, only to be pulled through the other end of the time warp, re-emerging back where we convened in 2019 in Tucson, Arizona--but now it is 2023 and life has changed immensely.

A sferic (aka atmospherics) is a term for an audio-visual lightning document. A lightning channel with all its branches and its electric currents behaves like a huge antenna system from which electromagnetic waves of all frequencies are radiated. Beyond a distance where luminosity is visible and thunder can be heard (typically about 10 km), these electromagnetic impulses are the only sources of direct information about thunderstorm activity on the ground. While this impulsive radiation dominates at frequencies less than about 100 kHz, (loosely called
long waves), a continuous noise component becomes increasingly important at higher frequencies. The longwave electromagnetic propagation of sferics takes place within the Earth-ionosphere waveguide between the Earth's surface and the ionosphere. This phenomena produces whistlers and sprites, largely generated by giant lightning events on the ground.

By mid-2019 I had spent four years recording countless sferical data, out-in-the-field, while doing research from the University of Colorado. I spent these years traversing the deserts and high plains of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. I now see sferics as a deep metaphor of transient energies.

What is heard on this album is something much more complicated than this brief introduction to ionospheric noise. This album is a journey away from home and back to it, through a most inconvenient and explosive path way. Sparing all the intimacies and personal exposures and tragedies, “Sferics” is a two-part compostion of living in-between, of being lost and found anew. A sound of uncertainties and flashes of clarity. It is as much a rigorous instrumental statement as it is a moment where my young child and I kick rusty cans around the pine forest of Northern
Arizona, unsure what our future prospects will shape up to be. Recorded sferics are curious because we never quite know exactly where they manifest from, whether they’re from a storm over the hill or from a couple thousand miles away. Regardless of lightning’s distance their presence is
felt all the the same.. -- CR. / Sept ‘23

Tracklist

1.	A	23:10

2.	B	20:08

Credits

released October 28, 2023

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