VA - Place Language (2019)

Place Language is an international non-profit compilation album project inspired by the themes found in Robert Macfarlane’s widely-acclaimed book ‘Landmarks’. In particular it focuses on the book’s extensive topographic glossaries, the “word-hoard” of depictive landscape terms gathered from 30 different languages, dialects and sub-dialects around Britain & Ireland and divided into sections by type of terrain (Flatlands, Uplands, Waterlands, Coastlands, Underlands, Northlands, Edgelands, Earthlands and Woodlands).Relying on these topograms, or “tiny place poems”, as creative prompts, Place Language seeks to both inspire a renewed interest in our surroundings and reinvigorate our appreciation for the audible textures & patterns that characterize a place in keeping with the book’s stated desire to “re-wild” our vocabulary.

The collection features the work of 28 different sound-artists, field recordists, and musicians from around the globe each of whom selected a Landmarks topogram and recorded an impression of it thus adding rich new aspects of dimensionality through the act of sonification. These selections cover all nine of the book’s glossaries along with place-words of new coinage as prompted by the blank one which Macfarlane leaves at the end of the book for readers to fill in from their own experience. The end result is a truly global and collaborative survey of place, language, and sound.

The audio tracks created for the album have been mastered by Ian Hawgood (also a participating artist) and packaged in a special letter-pressed booklet for release by UK-based boutique label Fluid Audio with stunning visuals by American contemporary artist Gregory Euclide and a thought-provoking liner-note essay written by Robert Macfarlane himself. All proceeds from sales of Place Language will be donated to War Child, a charity organization that provides relief to children in areas of war and conflict; children without a place of their own.

"The quiet hope of ‘Landmarks’ was to ‘re-wild’ even a little of our available language for landscape, to celebrate and disseminate the extraordinary ‘word-hoard’ of coinages that has flourished historically – but thinned recently – for seeing, naming, and knowing aspects of place and its more-than-human life" – Robert Macfarlane

This is where it all started – the rich skein of natural, lingual, and literary references, the profound lyrical prose and elegant precision of language, the kinship with great landscape writers like Nan Shepherd and Barry Lopez, and, of course, the glossaries. For readers of Landmarks, it is also our own quiet hope that the music and art of Place Language will resonate with you in a meaningful way. On the other hand, if you are not familiar with the book or with Macfarlane’s work in general, we hope this will perhaps be the start of what it is sure to be an enlightening journey and a deeper appreciation of your own natural surroundings.