"Sand / Layna is the first full-length solo release by Canadian sound artist crys cole. While cole is known to many through her collaborative work with a host of Canadian artists and internationals such as Oren Ambarchi, Keith Rowe and James Rushford, this LP presents the first opportunity for an extended appreciation of her singular approach to amplified sound. Using contact and other microphones to amplify her interactions with small objects and the surfaces on which they rest, cole’s work exists in a lineage of heavily amplified ‘small sound’ that stretches back to Cage’s Cartridge Music. cole’s approach to these materials and techniques is distinguished by its single-mindedness: rather than simply searching for interesting or attractive sounds, her performances attempt to illuminate the sonic properties of the specific objects and amplification devices she uses. Devoid of looping and complex processing, the sonic outcome of her work always retains an audible link to the handling of microphones and what they amplify. The awkward and sometimes even ‘ugly’ sounds of manipulated microphones and recording equipment thus sit comfortably alongside the mysterious crackle of amplified salt and the deep, musical resonance of a rubbed tabletop. This LP presents two pieces, recorded almost ten years apart. Sand, recorded in 2004, crafts a sustained texture from rubbed surfaces that transcends academic sound art tropes to recall the haunted environments of Massimo Toniutti and Small Cruel Party. The seemingly static structure of the piece allows the multitude of dynamic and timbral variations caused by the basic instability of cole’s sound sources to come to the fore. In contrast, Layna, constructed between 2012 and 2013, lets loose a volatile stream of microscopic activity. Adding extremely amplified voice and domestic field recordings to the mix, the piece inhabits a space of bodily, almost sensual intimacy, moving beyond the Cageian tradition of small sounds to somewhere uncomfortably human."

Black Truffle, 2015