Sow Your Gold in the White Foliated Earth is
Helge Sten's audio score for a series of concerts performed by Cologne's
Ensemble Musikfabrik, written and recorded using rare instruments designed by seminal avant-garde composer
Harry Partch. As
Partch was well known for developing a 43-tone just intonation scale, the ensemble built a set of the composer's instruments and had to re-train themselves to learn how to read and play music using the distinctive, non-standard tunings.
Sten was given access to the instruments, and he edited and layered his recordings of them; since he has never learned to read nor write music notation, he worked with a professional arranger in order to develop a score for the musicians. Released as a
Deathprod album in 2022,
Sten's audio score has almost nothing to do with dark ambient, the genre he's commonly associated with, but it's still a stark, uneasy listen. Only the faint, tense droning behind the scattered, dulcimer-like vibrations of "I O" bears a resemblance to
Deathprod's signature "audio virus." Other pieces consist of sparse, slowly paced thrums with some natural reverberation, but no added effects. "VI O" is a stunning, bell-enhanced piece which benefits from the restraint and repetition characteristic of
Deathprod's best work. "VII O" is more unsettling, starting out with slowly paced percussive hits before erupting with intense, scurrying motions and random-sounding clanging. At best, the pieces sound like traditional folk music from an unknown world, performed in a musical language that humankind hasn't deciphered yet. That said, this release is highly atypical of
Deathprod's discography, and would probably be of greater interest to fans of
Harry Partch rather than
Helge Sten. ~ Paul Simpson
