*50 copies limited edition* »presage« is an act of sonic foraging: shortwave radio transmissions and field recordings were collected around Helsinki, then assembled and transformed into two long-form pieces. Collecting radio brings with it a particular uncertainty, as signals may have travelled enormous distances before arriving stripped of their context and misted with static, interference, and the imprint of atmospheric conditions. A field recording is a more certain and geographically secure material; however, once removed from its site and placed beside these transmissions, it too becomes unstable. Across »presage«, both kinds of material are treated as partial evidence of somewhere else, and the record feels to me like a worldbuilding exercise, familiar in its materials but somewhat otherworldly in the environment it creates.
Lamberg described the work as static, haunting, droning, and mysterious, utilising sounds that occupy uncertain contexts, and this quality is closely reflected in Minja-Milla Ikonen’s accompanying poem, which moves through hum, skin, shoreline, sand, ribs, forest, asphalt, and wind, allowing one sensation to pass into another in a way that feels akin to the shifting surface of Miska’s composition. Its final suggestion that sounds are always presaging something else offers a useful description of Lamberg’s method: a radio fragment points towards an absent broadcaster, a field recording towards a site that can no longer be entered through the recording alone, while a transformed sound points towards its source and away from it simultaneously.
Miska Lamberg is a sound artist and musician whose work reimagines the sounds of everyday environments through field recordings and recycled audio materials. Guided by attentive listening and a minimalist approach to editing, they assemble existing sounds into new contexts that reveal unexpected relationships between place, memory, and perception.
