Poem – FORMATIONS

To be a cloud. To hold and be held together by water. Floating, drifting, gliding, maneuvering the landscape underneath until it drops. Losing hold of its formation.
Yeah.
It itches.
To lose control and scratch would mean to disappear and then reappear somewhere unknown.
To drop down onto a roof, then trickle off into the dark slime.
Then treated.
Maybe trapped?
Maybe saved from being thrown down someone’s throat, then processed and passed back into the slime.

Glimmering in the sunlight.

We can see because of water, yet it’s hard to see underwater.
We are a formation of water. It forms all around us and in us because it is us.
What form do you see it in its prime?
As it bounces off the concrete after a heatwave?
As you dive into its chlorinated form with the summer sun beating down?
Lukewarm from a tap in a cup whilst dehydrated? Cold with cucumber?
In a muddy puddle or above your head in a storm cloud?
What formation?

Straight from the freezer, shaped in amould as (ICE). As droplets fall from the watering can onto the freshly blossomed (FLOWERS), crystallizing their color and fragrance.
(WATER) as oceans, seas, lakes, sweat, canals, creeks, streams, waterfalls, ponds, rivers, wetlands, mirages, tears, condensation, pools, and puddles.
As movement together in small and large groups with no intended direction. Back and forth. Up and down. Side to side. In harmony against physical forms to wash and erode, destroy, and create. Like the particles of (SAND) under your feet before diving headfirst, slowly tumbling, falling, but importantly forming.

Review

Mary Hurrell’s debut album FORMATIONS was released via London-based Calling Cards Publishing. Recorded between the winter solstices of 2022 & 2023 in Akureyri (North Iceland), North Devon (UK), Aldeburgh (UK), and Santander (Spain), FORMATIONS is an experimentation of vocals and sounds that hold a subtle tension, finding moments of exertion through a change of sonic textures.

With the focal part of the album being Hurrell’s voice, she uses and manipulates it in ways that weave weave and pass through and over each other whilst not falling into a mess of vocals and sounds, organically letting movements, electronic percussion composition, and sound design create her desired outcome.

From start to finish, FORMATIONS holds an emotive atmosphere that draws you into Mary Hurrell’s abstraction on the mediation of inner and outer landscapes, in-between space, and visceral poetics. You get a sense of improvisation and fixation on how field recordings further the album direction and upon every listen are opened to a new perspective.