Laura Cocks: field anatomies
Carrier Records

The five intensely physical works on field anatomies sound unlike any flute pieces I've heard before and probably any you've heard too. This extraordinary solo collection by TAK Ensemble co-founder Laura Cocks pushes far beyond the boundaries of the realm typically associated with the instrument. The New York-based artist involves the entire body in rendering the material into corporeal form, the result a fearless debut statement. field anatomies is also a profoundly personal project as each piece is the product of a long-standing collaborative relationship between composer and musician.

The extreme sonic character of the material becomes so quickly the norm that the album's most startling moments are those where the flute appears in its familiar form. Describing field anatomies as a solo flute recording also requires some clarification: whereas Spiritus by Swiss artist Jessie Cox is scored for solo flute, Bethany Younge's Oxygen and Reality and Joan Arnau Pàmies' Produktionsmittel I involve piccolo, balloons, electronics, and hardware (Younge) and amplified flute, aluminum foil, glass bottle, and fixed media (Pàmies) for their respective realizations.

Having obtained permission from the composers, Cocks generously allowed me to see the scores for the five pieces, and as is always the case following the notation while listening to the album makes for an illuminating experience; anyone granted that opportunity would come away from the release with a dramatically enhanced appreciation for what Cocks has accomplished. Listed with the performance notes for David Bird's Atolls, for example, are “Tongue Ram,” “Key Clicks,” and “Vocal Fry” (the latter an effect “produced through a loose glottal closure, permitting air to bubble slowly with a popping or rattling sound of a very low frequency”), whereas the electroacoustic exploration You'll See Me Return to the City of Fury by Bogotá, Colombia-born and NYC-based DM R includes guidelines such as “melt with white noise” and “growl like a scary wolf.” The scores, those by Bird and Joan Arnau Pàmies in particular, are a ravishing feast for the eyes that one could easily picture in a gallery setting, ideally with Cocks performing the pieces alongside them.

Bird wrote Atolls for solo piccolo and twenty-nine spatialized piccolos, with the auxiliary performers positioned around the soloist (and audience) in a circle. Adding to the work's interest, he derived the pitch material played by the auxiliary performers from the combined spectral analysis of a crash cymbal and the scream by Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) from Psycho, and wove text excerpts from Roberto Bolaño's 2666 into the solo piccolo part. Yet while knowing those details enhances the listening experience, the performance is completely absorbing as a pure musical expression, especially when the techniques it demands from Cocks are so wide-ranging. Rapid-fire flute patterns intermingle with breathless vocal effects, strangulated wails, and chromatic clusters for eighteen minutes, the instruments during one remarkable passage assembling into an engulfing swarm and elsewhere suggesting a cacophonous traffic jam.

Bird's is hardly the only unusual sound creation. Combustible machine-like noises and ear-piercing pitches grind, rumble, and roar through Younge's nightmarish Oxygen and Reality, the performance so striking it intensifies the desire to see Cocks enact the piece live. The most extreme of the five is undoubtedly Pàmies' Produktionsmittel I, which, quoting from the composer's description, places the flutist “in a position where they are overwhelmed by the amount of notational instructions on the score [and] are compelled to produce as many sounds as possible, to an extent perhaps humanly impossible.” Cocks rises to the occasion with a jaw-dropping performance where violent writhing, groans, sputtering, and puckering appear in an uninterrupted flow for twenty-five minutes. Heard in the context of such material, Cox's Spiritus has the feel of an ultra-restrained meditation, even while it weaves breathy vocal textures into its acoustic flute score.

The sounds Cocks generates in these performances naturally invites personalized associative responses from the listener. For me, some episodes suggest noises made by various animal species, whereas others recall the horrific sounds emanating from Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) in The Exorcist during the deepest throes of possession. It isn't easy listening, for sure (the Pàmies piece especially), but field anatomies is never less than gripping. The care Cocks brought to the musical dimension also extends to the project's presentation. Integrated into the design of the physical release are flowers and beeswax, and each package includes a seed packet of wildflowers that instructs the purchaser to “Scatter These.”

February 2022