Errands

Errands is the first duo recording from Marja Ahti and John McCowen. Working without electronics, McCowen uses clarinet multiphonics to layer beating patterns and split tones, while Ahti draws on electronics, field recordings and instrumental sounds. After sharing a bill at Stockholm’s Edition Festival in 2024, they began the collaboration heard here.

Recording in Iceland, Ahti gathered field recordings not of its usual natural spectacle but of everyday Reykjavik: bustling streets, humming engines, static sinewaves, clarinet resonances and fleeting textures. The music draws on electroacoustic principles while favouring stillness, continuous change and a deliberate awkwardness.

Halfway through Chorales, an overdubbed recorder arrangement of Messiaen’s O sacrum convivium! brings both delicacy and liturgical grandeur. That double quality runs through Errands, a record full of details that reward repeated listening and sharpen the ear to everyday sound.