The Cold Aesthetic and the Warm Imagination: Murmuri and the Acousmatic Pact

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1947

Murmuri

I Like the Cold Aesthetic

(2024)

Murmuri is an Australian experimental music duo featuring Raúl Sánchez i Jorge and Brian O’Dwyer, exploring the boundaries of sound through ambient, drone, and acousmatic music. Their latest album, You Can’t Discuss the Ocean with a Pond Frog, demonstrates their mastery of crafting immersive soundscapes that defy conventional structure. Acousmatic music—where sound is detached from its source—forms the core of Murmuri’s artistry, challenging listeners to engage with the raw textures and evolving tones on a deeply personal level. 

Through layered drones, manipulated noise, and subtle shifts, Murmuri’s compositions evoke haunting yet meditative atmospheres, inviting introspection and imaginative interpretation. Their innovative approach and dedication to sound as an abstract medium have positioned them as significant voices in experimental music. Murmuri continues to captivate audiences by transforming ordinary sound into extraordinary experiences that resonate with listeners.

00:00

Sorry, no results.

Please try another keyword

In Acousmatic music, the veiling of the source that is creating the sound presented to the listener is its ace in the hole. This quality is ingrained—it’s the very nature of the Acousmatic and, if it were absent, it would not be called Acousmatic music.

It’s rightly referred to as “music for loudspeakers” because—if you think about it… this veiling is the reason that the sounds produced are allowed, or maybe a better word would be “empowered” to do their work on the listeners inner states. To transport the message to the listener, recorded music needs the medium of the loudspeaker. To eliminate any pre-packaging of these sounds that may influence or lead the listener down paths not chosen by them alone, isn’t it best that all reference points, visual and tactile also be eliminated?

With identification provided by our naturally given sense organs… comes influence. If I see, with my own two eyes a drummer pounding away on the skins, my perceptions of the sound are going to be pre-packaged into thinking about that spectacle—watching their arms flailing, their feet kicking and their facial contortions contorting. In other words, my perception is going to be laser focused on prompting images that are directly correlated with my visual input. All memories brought into consciousness will follow suit. I will see a drummer. The Acousmatic provides a space for the visual and tactile, but importantly, this sense data will come from the imagination.

Therefore, you can say that since the source of the sounds are veiled, the sounds that are so foundational to Acousmatic music—this veiling gives them a straight shot, a mainline to the listeners imaginatio vera—their true imagination. Their active imagination. As the philosopher and specialist of Islamic mysticism Henry Corbin would put it, the mode of perception that opens an ontologically real world. He calls this world the Mundus Imaginalis.

The qualities don’t stop there. Acousmatic music is the gift that keeps on giving. A reason for that is the notion that the individuals imaginal faculties are not pinned down to single images or repeating sets of images when listening to this music. We are different each time we listen and by extension, so is our perception of the sounds we experience.

Case in point, listening to I Like the Cold Aesthetic, the piece we are featuring today will be my model. I’ve engaged with this piece numerous times since the start of this series, I feel I’m in a strictly personal position to share my latest Cinéma pour l’oreille—Cinema for the ears presented to me in the mother of all IMAX viewings. The one provided by the imaginal. The word “latest” is key—it’s different with each listening experience. It’s that gift, remember? That gift that keeps on giving.

Brian Eno has famously defined ambient music as music that can be as “ignorable as it is interesting”. I bet you can guess where I’m going with this. If you’ve been, even casually following the Acousmatic Crossing series, you can probably guess that I’m a serious music listener. I’ve gotten to the point that the only ignorable music are the sounds that are being forcibly pumped into my eardrums, day in and day out that are incessantly screaming at me… buy my product!

Music used to fill up every nook and cranny of my waking space. It’s not like that anymore. Now, music listening for me has been elevated to “event status”. It’s an activity, dare I say one that takes a sacred position in my life. It’s an event that I carve out time for in advance. It’s a ritual of so much import, where the set as well as the setting must be perfect. It’s all I can do to be in service to the music that, in my mind will deliver onto it the respect it deserves. Music has become my psychopomp into Corbin’s zone of the imaginal.

As I type this, I had given such a listen to I Like the Cold Aesthetic last night. The experience, being different each time (because I’m different each time), was particularly effective with this last listen. It’s music to inhabit. To melt into and to allow it to melt over you. For an instant, a perceivable instant… and another instant after that, I found myself inside a form. A form that was moving and changing.

The piece itself has the outward affect of serenity. But not a pastoral, Lord Dunsany-esqe vision of the fields beyond the fields we know. There’s no Elfin folk living in these marches.

Instead, this serenity was vast and black. It was abyssal and the form I referred to above was jet black that somehow showed itself against the already black void that no longer contained it because it became it. A form of churning motion, yet of perfect stillness within. Of movement—always changing, always different.

Was it cold, as the works title suggests? Yes, its deceptive lower case simplicity does give a rather cold, bleak minimal electronic sheen to the piece, like fresh ice on a gleaming chrome surface… but for those moments, those instants inside the flow… I was the form, I was time and change.

This is the gift given by the Acousmatic. It’s a reciprocal arrangement I’ll agree to every time. A pact between myself and the waveforms. My intentionality going into the experience is always rewarded. My hope, for those who listen… is to receive the same.

—Michael Eisenberg

As Murmuri, an Australian experimental music duo, we create works that aim to challenge perception and invite introspection. This track embodies the principles of Acousmatic music, using sound as an abstract medium to explore themes of detachment and transformation.

Through layered textures, minimalist drones, and shifting sonic motifs, I Like the Cold Aesthetic evokes a meditative yet disquieting atmosphere. Its evolving structure offers listeners a space for deep reflection, encouraging them to confront the liminal spaces between clarity and ambiguity—both sonically and emotionally.

—Raúl Sánchez i Jorge & Brian O’Dwyer

To live the total Murmuri experience, check out the entire album, You can’t discuss the ocean with a pond frog that this featured piece is from.

And if that’s not enough, you can find the entire catalog of music that drummer Brian O’Dwyer has created here.

Have a nice trip!