Mattie Barbier
This Is What People Think Mountains Look Like

An absolutely gorgeous long-form piece for trombone, its sustained tones billowing into spectral rumbles that open up trance-inducing harmonic spaces. Simultaneously monumental in scale and introspectively meditative, This Is What People Think Mountains Look Like leaves the brain swirling for days with its reverberations.

The venue is vital to the overall recording given it’s reverberant nature, allowing Barbier to follow the sound of their own trombone as it develops in the space.

Recorded at The Tank Center for Sonic Arts, Rangley, CO on June 3rd, 2021

“Constructed around 1940 as a railroad water-treatment facility, this seven-story Corten steel water tank was moved to Rangely in the mid-1960s for use as part of a fire-suppression system for the local utility company.  The plan was never realized, though, as the underlying shale proved unable to support the weight of the filled tank. So it remained empty.  However, the bed of gravel upon which the tank was placed bowed its floor into a gentle parabola, giving it an extraordinary internal acoustical resonance.

In 1976, sound artist Bruce Odland was shown the place by two Rangely locals.  Odland understood immediately that he had stumbled upon a treasure. “I’d never heard anything like it,” he said. “I’d never heard a sound last that long, with these dizzyingly beautiful reverberation effects going all over the place.”  For decades after Odland’s discovery, The Tank remained a secret performance and recording space for a dedicated group of sound artists and musicians.”

– Information taken from tanksounds.org

Mattie Barbier – Trombone
Mixed & mastered by Weston Olencki

Cover art photography by jem