Adam Pultz Melbye’s latest album Wade commences with static arco drones, eventually complimented by a digitally processed enigmatic sound recorded in the Wadden Sea in South-western Denmark. Still unidentified at the time of writing, the suspected culprit of this clicky and bubbly texture is the release of gas by microorganisms living in the seabed silt. Proceeding along through accumulating layers of signal processing, the dense textures give way to the plucked strings of the FAAB—a feedback double bass developed in collaboration with Hálldor Úlfarsson. While hovering at the edge of what artistic intervention can control, the feedback-induced self-oscillations of the bass strings merge with recordings from a cemetery and backyard in Berlin, bringing Wade to a close.
Adam’s previous album Dam was mainly recorded inside a dam hall in Bogong Village, Australia. Perhaps establishing a tradition for homages to water management architecture, the second track, Kammerslusen, i...

Adam Pultz Melbye’s latest album Wade commences with static arco drones, eventually complimented by a digitally processed enigmatic sound recorded in the Wadden Sea in South-western Denmark. Still unidentified at the time of writing, the suspected culprit of this clicky and bubbly texture is the release of gas by microorganisms living in the seabed silt. Proceeding along through accumulating layers of signal processing, the dense textures give way to the plucked strings of the FAAB—a feedback double bass developed in collaboration with Hálldor Úlfarsson. While hovering at the edge of what artistic intervention can control, the feedback-induced self-oscillations of the bass strings merge with recordings from a cemetery and backyard in Berlin, bringing Wade to a close.
Adam’s previous album Dam was mainly recorded inside a dam hall in Bogong Village, Australia. Perhaps establishing a tradition for homages to water management architecture, the second track, Kammerslusen, is named in honour of the Wadden Sea sluice bridge that provides much of the track’s audio. The opening of sluice doors, cars passing over the metal bridge, and a boat engine enter a dialogue with the pulsating string feedback of the FAAB. Feedback, the lively ecology of the Wadden Sea, and the sonic properties of built environments hence shape up as musical allies, the emergent rhythmical patterns of which carve out a collective sonic and performative agency....

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