For the first album release on Pure Space - and a welcome addition to our Home Listening Series - we are excited to present "At Every Corner" by Mara, a pivotal figure in Eora/Sydney's experimental music community.

Since 2020, the Home Listening series has showcased the introspective and wandering side of the label, featuring releases from Jennifer Loveless, jobfit, and 黑芝麻 (Hēi zhī ma). This series diverges from club constricts, inviting listeners to explore deeper, more contemplative soundscapes.

Throughout "At Every Corner", Mara weaves a rich tapestry of sound, creating captivating composites of audio snippets taken from her travels and performances along the way. The result is a mesmerising long-play that invites the listener into an ever wandering journey.

The album opens with its title track “At Every Corner”. Crafted from recordings taken primarily in Seoul, this track extends to various parts of South Korea. It features voices of new friends, loudspeaker announcements, insects, and fragments of Mara’s performances across the territory to capture and convey both the overstimulation and awe in the world surrounding her.

Next comes “Code Switch”; a sonic image of the subsurface created entirely from digitally manipulated contact microphone recordings of surfaces. This piece amplifies a perspective that sits within the ground. The title reflects on the changes in body and verbal language that occur in different cultural or social settings, and applies this concept to our relationship with the Earth.

On “Friend Reflection” Mara shares a reworking of a September 2022 performance in Karlsruhe, in Southwestern Germany with friends Nina and Rá∂hildur, who performed their poetry in French and Icelandic. The track also staples a looping viola sample from a separate performance in Sydney in April 2022. Collectively, the piece explores the geographical linking and unlinking of these experiences and memories through seamlessly interwoven audio.

“The Time It Takes” was composed during an artist residency in Itoshima, Japan. The track is structured in three parts using recordings of the three songs that would ring out through the town like clockwork at 8am, 12pm and 6pm. These signals, whether for timekeeping for farmers or testing the evacuation system, became the unintentional checkpoints for Mara’s time throughout this trip: the basis in keeping focus in the day, or finding the time to turn off for the evening, or a fleeting moment to tune into a collective listening experience.

Next you will hear “Images We've Created”, a track created during a residency in Bundanon with Temporary Position. Consolidating a week’s worth of audio recordings into one layered composition, this track reimagines time and textures. Leaning into the discussions on materiality and live streaming that filled the residency, the track archives fragments of the environment, daily routines and ideas.

On “Tokyo in 30,000 Steps” Mara combines excerpts from three of her performances in Tokyo, as well as field recordings from across Japan. Similar to "At Every Corner", it captures the awe, chaos, overstimulation, and disorientation of a bustling place.

Finally the album concludes with “Three Minutes of the River” which revisits field recordings made during a residency at the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture. It flows as a deeply layered 3-minute recording of the river at Bogong while Mara makes notes to herself, layered with crescendoing guitars - the only instrumentation on the record not recorded live in performance.

Mara's "At Every Corner" is a testament to her deep connection to time, place and community, as well as her skill in transforming everyday sounds into immersive auditory adventures. Her music, characterised by rich and murky tones and meticulous attention to detail, provides a captivating and deeply expressive listening experience.