| $12.48
new to stock as of
march 31st, 2008
threads:
minimalism-drones
playback-music
electro-acoustic-composition
electro-acoustic-improvisation
field-recordings
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| | | students of decay (usa) #sod 49 cd skeletons out “in remembrance of me” compact disc - in remembrance of me (36:21)
| | click the play button to hear an excerpt of "in remembrance of me" |
| march 2008 release ; the debut album from two of my favorite people working in tandem ; howard stelzer (who you know from his excellent intransitive label & the records he releases of his own music on it) & jay sullivan (who’s remarkably un-prolific despite also running a label himself; we break more records) ...
these two venture out into the countryside, tools on-hand (a battery of portable cassette decks & walkman, a single dansette turntable covered in contact mics, respectively) to witness to not so much a campfire as a full-on village-destroying bonfire - the telltale arcs of splintering wood perfectly replicated in surface noise, the keeing, high-frequency / temperature escape-vectors ditto via varispeed hand-on-the-motor cassette jockeying ...
a single, carefully considered piece with, despite being wholly improvised constructed from improvisations, a very evident narrative ... the duo’s approach to their respective playback-manipulation setups has little to do with an otomo / marclay-style plunderphonic cut-ups than the more textural work of people like michael northam / john grzinich & jeph jerman (the latter, i’ve surmised, is a big touchstone for both) ...
superlative work ; listening at a fair clip on this dreary day takes me far away from these brightly fluorescent-lit environs into some moss-bedded troglodytic lair ... frankly, it kinds of sounds like the best thing in the world right now. highly recommended !!! |
| | students of decay press release... |
| sod-49
skeletons out - "in remembrance of me"
"in remembrance of me" is the debut release by the boston based duo skeletons out, comprised of howard stelzer and jay sullivan. stelzer and sullivan make use of tapes and vinyl respectively, using these spare, deceptively crude means to conjure strikingly developed, transportive aural landscapes which are equal parts lush and expansive and claustrophobic and atrophied. the record begins with breakdown, as swarming, hissing tapes flutter, and amidst stuttering, resonant clatter a rusted automaton buckles, faltering, afraid, before pistons fire anew and it rises, heralding the slow imploding collapses which will inevitably follow, as though rising from this detritus.
stelzer and sullivan traverse the same barren netherworld valleys as mirror at their most blasted, while foraging deep within coppices akin to the natural decay states which inform the aesthetics of corrosion at work in much of loren chasse and jim haynes' output. think of "in remembrance of me" as a fugue caked in mud, one which beckons you deeper and deeper down into its manifold ravaged and entropic depths.
mastered by ernst karel with artwork by justin meyers.
cd (ltd. 500) |
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