Joe Colley Hive Ferns 3"CD Available through the Helen Scarsdale Agency: $8.00 "I grew up with the sound of bees, my father was an amateur beekeeper. It is an amazingly complex but also simple sound, full of warmth, comfort, but also menace-the drone of many tiny legs and wings. My father's hives were wiped out by a virus before I could make a recording, but I found someone willing to let me visit them in the hills of California. I made recordings from the outside and inside, embedding microphones among the active bees and positioning them at the entrances to the hives. It took me some years to arrive at an idea of how to use this material in a respectful way. The sound itself is so beautiful in its monotony. I could listen to it forever. But i took it as a challenge to examine my relationship to this sound, to view it from several angles including raw unprocessed recordings as well as playback through cymbals and analog synthesizer. I hope somehow it shows my perception of the overlap between our current electronic reality and one of the most elemental sounds on earth". -- Joe Colley In our opinion, Mr. Colley has crafted a highly refined composition that articulates this border state between the manufactured and the natural on Hive. Yes, there is the menacing sound of the bees throughout this shortened program; yet, he's softened much of the threat of the sting by rendering his bees as a dreamy miasma of billowing white noise occasionally broken up by the patter of bees crawling over his microphones. Colley's collage is not as wholly toxic and growling as many of the other recordings (e.g. Desperate Attempts at Beauty); but is certainly no less effective.