Karman Line Collective’s, To Be, is released to coincide with National Bee Day. The reasons for this become apparent from the first seconds of the opening track, a field recording of bees buzzing in aural close-up. It sounds as though they are tuning up, searching for an ‘E’. As they locate it a drone kicks in, generated by humans, electronic layers start to build up into an apicultural ambient soundscape.
To Be is the soundtrack to an installation by Wolfgang Buttress called BEES: A Story of Survival, at the World Musuem in Liverpool. Buttress is also a quarter of the group, along with Kevin Bales, Tony Foster (who has played with Spiritualized and Julian Cope) and Justin Goodyer. This is not their first rodeo, or indeed bee-related recording: as BE, Buttress, Bales and Foster recorded ONE, another bee installation soundtrack for a Kew Gardens show highlighting the crucial role played by bees in our world, and the existential threats they face.
To Be plays as a single 35-minute piece structured like a song, with eight contiguous tracks structured as verses, choruses, middle eights and so on. The album is built around recordings of bees communicating, using the many sounds at their disposal from ‘tooting’ to ‘quacking’ and ‘purring’. Processed through guitar pedals, they become a bee library which is completely absorbing to hear. The ambient electronic music made by the Collective seems to follow the bees’ lead, imitating the frenzied, gnarled, industrial sounds they naturally produce. It soon becomes clear that bees and alternative music go hand-in-wing. The album’s ‘chorus’ tracks bring in vocals from Camille Christel, who sings like a honey-drunk, half-speed Hope Sandoval, and sounds wonderful.
The album, which begins in a calm but all-enveloping mode, gradually ups the tempo and urgency. ‘Swarm’, the middle eight song, drops chaotic, vibrating instrumentation into a recording of a hissing, whistling swarm, with cello, trumpet and saw. ‘Vanishing’ – the ‘drop’ – brings Deirdre Bencsik’s cello to the fore in a portentous, wired waggledance ending in a thunderstorm. The final track, ‘Symphony’, swells and swells over seven and a half minutes, reaching a cosmic climax reminiscent of Earth or Wooden Shjips, powered equally by bee and band.
Since Buttress’ first bee installation in 2017, little has changed and the need to appreciate and protect bees only grows more urgent. From this slow motion global catastrophe, Wolfgang Buttress and Karman Line Collective have created remarkable, powerful music. To Be stands entirely on its own merits as an album, and will surely have a fearsome impact heard in situ in Liverpool. The album creates a fully realised, highly original sonic world which, far from being worthy, is deeply enjoyable and at times euphoric. Tell it, as they say, to the bees.
