MANDERLOVA, MAGDALENA - KOZMICKE LOUKY (LP)

Kozmické louky is a wetland in Silesia, on the very edge of the Czech Republic bordering Poland, where I come from, and one of the last two remaining floodplain areas on the Opava River, locally known as the Opavice. Thanks to ongoing restoration, this system of alluvial meadows has once again become home to multitudes of animal and plant communities, while at the same time facing the local-global climate crises. The album Kozmické louky listens closely to this environment and its changes over time, entering into a dialogue with it, imagining and dreaming through field recordings and electroacoustic compositions created on site or in close relation to it between 2021 and 2025. There comes that rare moment when a human being falls silent. Alone, on behalf of their kind, which for a brief instant ceases to make sound. And in that silence -not empty, but vibrating - I begin to hear all the others. All the sounds not meant for me, yet surrounding me, including me, absorbing me. Breaths, rustles, songs, rhythms that form endlessly shifting compositions - an unceasing communication, voices attuned to themselves and to the environment that carries them. I sense that what I call "now" or "I" is only one of the knots in that vast network - a condensation of relations that both exceed me and bring me into being. It is a state of deep quiet, an almost meditative moment of bliss. As if, for an instant, a vision opened into a world that transcends us - a realm where all living beings breathe in mutual understanding, in delicate, enduring balance. It happened in Kozmické louky. A revelation of the senses, a seeing through layers. The soundscape has become music. It depends only on how sensitive we are towards the land, and how that music will be heard.