Rekem Records presents the new album by artist and researcher, Manja Ristić. A classically trained musician and composer whose work extends to dance, theatre and movie production, Ristić also focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to sound, field recording, and experimental radio arts. In the last decade, she has published sound art independently and through labels and publishing bodies such as LINE, mappa, Skupina, Unfathomless, tsss tapes, DASA tapes, and many more. In this most recent work she presents four ambient compositions, situated in what journalist Lujo Parežanin aptly describes as ‘listening-as-speculation’. Read the accompanying text here.
Liner notes:
On a serene Sunday dawn in mid-April, I quietly slipped into the space of KONTEJNER, the Zagreb-based curatorial collective. Inside, people were mostly lying on the floor—some wrapped in blankets, some peacefully asleep—survivors of the closing night of the 2025 Zagreb Music Biennale. Those who were awake were transfixed by the exquisitely delicate performance of Manja Ristić, who stood over a desk scattered with her characteristic array of instruments and objects: various percussion tools, a violin, a transistor radio, a pair of hydrophones...
Titled Awakenings, the performance encapsulated not only the musical but also the fundamental artistic and ethical essence of Manja’s work: a rigorous yet playful approach to sound and texture, a deep attentiveness to the natural environment, and a gentleness and emotional clarity in her relationship with both her material and her audience. For those familiar with Manja, it was a reminder that a gesture of care is present in everything she does—making it no surprise that people would entrust her not only with their full attention but also with their dreams. It is in keeping with this caring nature that ecology has become a central theme running through nearly all of Manja’s recent work. Living on an island—especially one as vulnerable to touristification as Korčula, where she has been based in recent years—undoubtedly feeds her environmental imagination.
As an artist working at the intersection of sound and environment, Manja places greater emphasis on how she positions herself as a listening subject than on the technical aspects of field recording. On Sargassum aeterna, her captivating new album released by the Greek label Rekem Records, she takes this notion of listening-as-registering a step further—transforming it into listening-as-speculation.
Sargassum aeterna is a programmatic four-track album framed by a fantastical narrative set in a dystopian future—the year 2221—where today’s social and ecological contradictions have reached their most extreme conclusions. Within this future world, we witness catastrophes largely of human making: disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field, a global war (North vs. South), destructive ocean mining, and the suspension of human rights. Amid the gloom, however, there are sanctuaries: the Scottish Isle of Arran, “home to the child-God Luka” (presumably depicted on the album cover), and the island of Mljet in the Adriatic, just southwest of Korčula, where “coralligenous species flourish, alongside insects, small mammals, and the few remaining traces of marine life.”
Manja renders this imagined world into sound with her signature subtlety and clarity, though her compositions are never one-dimensional. There is anxiety, but also tranquility; trepidation, but also melancholia. The sonic palette is deliberately sparse: field recordings that capture both the intensity and desolation of life by the sea, instrumental drones, and the ever-present hydrophones. The dramaturgy is mostly static, creating a suspended feeling—a sense of ominous stillness.
Sargassum aeterna is distinctly uncanny. It employs the technique of estranging familiar sounds to evoke a soundscape of a future that may have already begun to bleed into our present. The signs are unmistakable: the ecological crisis, the disregard for human life in the Mediterranean and along Europe’s borders, looming imperial wars, genocides committed with impunity, the steady rise of fascism.
Only the child-God can save us—him, and the unconditional gentleness of Manja’s music.
Lujo Parežanin
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Releases June 5, 2025
All sounds recorded & composed by Manja Ristić
Field & hydrophone recording locations: Nazaré, Portugal; Isle of Arran, Scotland; Islands of Mijet & Vrnik, Croatia; Popina, Serbia
Instruments: violin, EMS Synthi 100, Atlantic shells & found sounds
Hydrophone & contact mic made by Jez riley French
Mastering by Goran Simonoski / La Plant Studio
Cover image by Marko Paunović
Liner notes by Lujo Parežanin
Layout by Kostis Kilymis
Accompanying text by Manja Ristić