Michael Shanahan from Grange Heights is Australian and he makes Sound Art, or Ambient Electronic Music and makes CDs under the title of MiXile. His work is specialist, different and very very beautiful. He records ambient or background sounds of the place he visits and loops and mixes this with various electronic sounds to produce unusual, quirky, dreamy and mostly relaxing sound. You can relax into a landscape, you can wallow in the soundscapes of NULLARBOR and it is an amazing experience of vast open spaces and occasional voices and sounds that intrigue and puzzle. His work can encourage you to get lost in a soundscape of the imagination.
One of the cleverest recordings is Broken Hill, made in a cinema in New South Wales waiting for Pirates Of The Carribean 2 to start. Dubbo And Beyond has a captivating looped rhythm with weird recordings from a radio in the background and then a huge rush of sound as a cargo train passes. Blue Mountains is 18 minutes long and you could lapse into sleep such is the hypnotic effect of the work. Shanahan selects and mixes with the skill of a radio or movie recordist. The shortest piece Eucla is just over three minutes and you can hear the sound of water flowing from a pipe that has carried the precious liquid at least 330 miles.
The CD can be obtained from www.mixile.com
