Carlos CASAS - Kamana

Spanish filmmaker and recordist Carlos Casas pays tribute to the Aeta, an indigenous group from the Philippines who hosted him for weeks while he observed and recorded. The resulting set of tracks is a window into an unseen world, straddling experimental sound collage and raw environmental recording to tell a complex, layered story of an ancient community.

When looking at the practice of field recording, it’s important to think about the ethics behind it. As a filmmaker, Casas seems aware of role he plays when he casts real people in his recordings – as such, ‘Kamana’ feels intimate, rigorous and consensual. Casas was welcomed into the Aeta community, an ancient nomadic culture, and lived with them for a significant period of time, learning their traditions, talking to them at length, and recording the sounds of their day-to-day experiences. The Aeta were devastated by the eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in 1991, but didn’t give up their connection to their land, continuing to maintain their long-held farming and hunting practices.

With ‘Kamana’, Casas creates a fluid portrait of the Aeta that shifts between the real and the imaginary, the tangible and the mythical. There are untreated field recordings that capture instruments, rituals, interviews and karaoke, but Casas also takes time to assemble them into distinct experimental compositions. He uses his experience living with the Aeta to realise a sonic narrative that attempts to tell their story in sophisticated abstract strokes that are as vivid as his own memory, and it’s these moments that feel most resonant. Compositions like ‘Panilan’ and ‘Camote’ are rooted in sounds captured with the Aeta, but are dissociated, shifting the sounds into another plane of existence.

‘Torture Dance’ is particularly surreal, sounding like distorted kalimba or a haunted chime, with animal groans and drones conjuring an atmosphere that’s psychedelic and magical. At moments, it sounds as if you’re sitting next to a blazing fire, hearing a story that’s evolved over generations, or the recollection of a colorful, labyrinthine dream. The hour-long ‘Katapusan (Fire and Mud Mix)’ is even better; it’s basically an audio movie that drops you into the Aeta’s world, first with untreated recordings and then with abstraction that slowly transforms into almost orchestral euphoria. Beautiful, moving material.