Amid the shifting landscapes of contemporary sound, where the boundaries between composition and environment dissolve, Judith Hamann's "Aunes" emerges as an exploration of presence and materiality. Released on March 14th, 2025, via Shelter Press, the album finds Hamann expanding her sonic vocabulary, weaving cello, synthesizers, organ, voice, and field recordings into a deeply personal and tactile listening experience.

The title "Aunes" - drawn from an old French unit of measurement for fabric - suggests a fluid relationship between form and material. Much like how an aune of silk differs from one of linen, each piece here is shaped not by rigid structures but by the specific textures of the instruments, locations, and circumstances in which they were conceived. Hamann refers to these works as 'songs', and they unfold with a rare sensitivity to resonance, space, and time.

The opening track, "by the line", sets a contemplative tone, where the cello's rich vibrations are accompanied by subtle electronic textures, evoking a sense of measured unraveling. In "Casa Di Riposo, Gesu’ Redentore", Hamann layers field recordings from a walk to an outdoor mass in Chiusure, blending distant voices, footsteps, and nature's whispers into a serene auditory collage reminiscent of Moniek Darge's ethereal landscapes.

"Seventeen fabrics of measure" delicately balances on the edge of silence, with sparse melodic threads that seem to stitch the listener's attention to the present moment. The brevity of "bruststÄrke (lung song)" belies its depth; composed from layered whistling during an asthma flare-up, it transforms personal vulnerability into an intimate soundscape, echoing the experimental vocalizations of Henri Chopin.

"Schloss, night" captures the ambiance of a reverberant church space, where the interplay of organ and voice is accompanied by the subtle sounds of the environment, creating a ghostly ensemble that blurs the line between performer and space. The album culminates with "neither from nor towards", a sixteen-minute odyssey where Hamann's just-intoned cello notes and overdubbed voices ascend in elegiac arcs, reminiscent of the slow, mournful beauty found in the works of Ockeghem or Linda Catlin Smith.

Judith Hamann, an Australian-born composer and cellist now residing in Berlin, has been lauded as an "extraordinary Australian cellist" by The Guardian. Her diverse body of work spans performance, improvisation, electro-acoustic composition, and site-specific installations. Holding a Doctor of Musical Arts from UC San Diego, Hamann has collaborated with luminaries such as Éliane Radigue and La Monte Young, continually pushing the boundaries of contemporary cello performance.