Having spent recent albums recording the sounds of the wider world to create a series of unsettled compositions, at times literally suggesting the ground shifting under one's feet, on Labyrinthitis Jacob Kirkegaard literally turns inward to record, as the liner notes describe, "vibrations in the inner ear," a self-generated audible sound from the organ of hearing itself. The descriptions from Kirkegaard and others provide the general science and philosophy behind this effort, but the larger question is -- is it good, and ultimately, what is one hearing? Perhaps the most compelling thing about Labyrinthitis is also the most distressing -- the disorienting sense of hearing the ear-piercing whines that one's own ears create, only amplified, layered and shaped into a series of tracks across the disc, without anything additional beyond that. The result is very intentionally disconcerting, and more than almost any other piece of music in recent years literally calls into question what one hears -- is it yourself, the speaker, something else? (If one has a touch of tinnitus it can be even more unnerving.) Labyrinthitis almost resists heavy listening by its very nature, but it still deserves attention, pushing as it does to the crossing point between sound as sound and sound as interpreted artifact, in this case generated by the receptive organ in question.
© Ned Raggett /TiVo