French sound artist and engineer Félix Blume produces something voyeuristic and creepy, yet engaging and life-affirming at the same time. This album is a collection of brass music played at funerals in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
According to the website, there are featured in these ‘performances’ 15 dead, 15 funerals, 16 funeral processions, 1 procession with no dead, 5 churches, 1 cemetery, 1 wake, all recorded, including the wails and sobbing of those who lost their loved ones. There is a feeling that death has been conquered and mocked, however, in the same way New Orleans funerals tend to be.
This is field recording at its most engaging, at least for me.