Two Realizations by Lee Noyes

By Nick Ostrum

I have written several reviews of Lance Austin Olsen’s work in the past. Rather than focusing on his own releases, this review will change tact and focus on two realizations of his compositions by multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Lee Noyes. On these, Noyes is featured on samplers and percussion. 

Lee Noyes and Lance Austin Olsen – Ruzawi (Ftarri, 2025)

Ruzawi is a slow ebb and flow, and I mean slow. From the first detectable sounds after a minute of silence (depending on volume, of course), Ruzawi gradually becomes denser, with a steady hum and electrical crackles. It then cools and ignites with a single guitar note and reverb. A shimmer of sound appears, as do hollow scraping noises, the kind that one might detect in the background hallways of Fassbinder’s World on a Wire, or Dan Erickson’s Severance.

The progress is patently slow, however, as a muted clap of metal slats and softened explosions drift into an eerie agglomeration of humming, crackles, and other noises. Halting stops intermittently intrude, as do heavy static overlain with engine thrum, high pitched rings (sometimes excruciating, but briefly), the friction of rubbed sticks of some unknown material, bugged Nintendo sounds, and the squeak of pinched Styrofoam, or something of the sort. As we move toward the end, the sounds intensify. Layers become more tightly laced but also more unwieldy. 

The minutiae are rich. The overall effect is stirring.  Having listened to many Olsen realizations before – primarily his own - I am all too tempted to read non-sequential narrative into this, but I am not sure to what extent that applies to this one. The score – in this case, a brief recollection of his bleak time in the Ruzawi School for Boys in Rhodesia and a drizzled, smeared, but quite evocative abstract painting – does deal with memory. So, there is at least a component of storytelling in the score, even if it appears less clearly in the realization.

As far as I can tell, this is the second release of the composition Ruzawi (composed 2011), and I would add this is no less effective than the three realizations by Ryoko Akam, Bruno Duplant, and Olsen himself on Ruzawi (Caduc, 2017).    

 

Lee Noyes and Lance Austin Olsen – A Night on the Veldt (Ftarri, 2025)

A thought of rock
A feel of silk
A sound that barely rattles forth

Don’t think that these few things remain alone 

A brief mind
A final float to see the sun
And feel the dirt
And sound
And stone
And peat
And dogs

Return to universal mist 

The score for A Night on the Veldt is more complex. It consists of a poem (labeled “some text clues to realization” and reproduced above), directive instructions, some quasi-traditional staff notation, and a several drawings. I am not sure how to interpret any of this, but I assume that is the point. A trained sound artist should have more insight into the conventional script, at least, but would still need to fill in the spaces with their own highly subjective interpretations for the rest.

Much like Ruzawi, A Night on the Veldt begins quietly, though this time with a synthesized field at dusk. It slowly unfolds into rummaging, then returns to the field. Various sounds scrape against that background. Some temporarily tear through, surprising the listener for a split second, before the sounds settle back into a deceptively understated background. Silence takes over for stretches. A lot is going on there, subtly, implicitly, explicitly.  In that, it reminds me of Nattinsekter, which was much busier but similarly mapped a walk through the memory of Zimbabwe’s prairies. The difference in inspiration may be the latter’s focus on the cacophony of insects themselves rather than the wider interactions of surroundings. A Night on the Veldt might better be considered taking it all in at once. A thoughtful and effective realization, that marries Noyes’ aesthetic toolbox with Olsen’s vision, or at least what I can make of it.

Both Ruzawi and A Night on the Veldt are available as CDs and downloads on Bandcamp: