| $15.12
new to stock as of
january 17th, 2008
threads:
electro-acoustic-composition
field-recordings
musique-concrète
1980s-electronic
minimalism-drones
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| | | family vineyard (usa) #fv 52 cd jed speare “sound works 1982-1987” double compact disc set - at the falls (35:51) 1982
- sleep tight (21:04) 1983
- taboo death (6:56) 1982
- love object (21:24) 1986
- wayside (29:36) 1987
| | click the play button to hear an excerpt of "sleep tight" |
| january 2008 release; a really quite amazing set of electro-acoustic / musique concrète compositions from composer jed speare; the curator of boston’s longest-running multimedia/art-space möbius & the person behind the excellent early-80s folkways lp “cable car soundscapes” ...
i walked into twisted village about 18 months back & saw a curious-looking home-burned cdr by mr. speare sitting on the book-shelf ; bought a copy & promptly filed it/forgot about it until i was contacted last year about helping out w/the mastering/transferring of jed’s massive archive of material... needless to say listening to it was something of a revelation; these long-form sound-mass lineage pieces are incredibly dense, rife with tumbling, filtered-out low-end drones sourced to field recordings, electronic processing, & sound-sculpture / installation-lineage constructs... calling to mind site-specific concrète works such as françois bayle’s “jeîta” but also the rumble/clank of david jackman’s organum ...
family vineyard has done a stellar job with the reissue; turning jed’s private issue into a proper double-disc with copious liner-notes, photos, & a bang-up mastering job by bhob rainey. three weeks in and we’ve already got a contender for one of the reissues of 2008... highly recommended !!! |
| | family vineyard press release... |
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jed speare
sound works 1982-1987
fv52 2xcd
sound works is the first collection of jed speare's long-form musique concrete compositions. speare is a crossover artist who has been working in sound, video, and performance for over thirty years. the music here reflects his investigation and uniquely expressive practice of analogue sound/field recording, editing, combining and mixing during that era.
he is the creator of the smithsonian folkways lp cable car soundscapes (1982). in the early 80s he recorded with the san francisco groups, research library (appearing with and solo on the legendary red spot compilation lp; subterranean records).
twelve page booklet features introduction by video artist and writer george quasha, speare’s detailed notes on each piece, rare photographs and score reproductions. remastered by bhob rainey (nmperign).
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an introduction by jed speare
as a young composer in the late seventies seeking a stronger connection between art, my own life, and the phenomena around us, i was drawn to working with tape recorders and the environment of sound. i had been profoundly affected by r. murray schafer's book, the tuning of the world, when i set forth in 1978 to go to the origin of his research, the world soundscape project, outside of vancouver, there to attend classes at simon fraser university's sonic research studio. my own homage to that realm and experience came in 1982 with the record album cable car soundscapcs, a work that starts out as a sound document, goes on to includes interviews, and ends as a tape composition.
i was enchanted by musique concrète as a music student in the early 1970s, although there were few practitioners in evidence. musique concrète as a practice, involving magnetic tape field recording, editing (splicing), processing, and mixing, enjoyed a relatively short period of intensive activity in the decade from the late 1940s into 1950s. composers were flocking instead to new electronic music studios to work with the limited overtone wave-forms of tone-generating oscillators, and left behind the fundamentally richer overtones of acoustic sounds available for recording just about anywhere; the latter were intrinsic to musique concrète. for me this difference was important perceptually and indeed psychoacoustically. the synthesizer's limited wave-form overtones elicited a lesser empathic, human response than did natural-seeming acoustic sound; listening to musique concrète was like walking on air in an ever-changing surrounding.
by 1980 i had developed a small home studio in san francisco and set forth on countless purposeful and aimless field recording experiences. i worked with tape recorder, microphones, and my own presence in the environment. i often imagined myself invisible then, and in fact tried to remain discreet (despite a meter-long shotgun mic!), recording all kinds of sounds and sound events. when i returned to the studio these recordings formed the basis for a morphological and tactile exploration that was always fresh, interactive, and interpersonal. and no doubt the most powerful discoveries took place in the editing, processing, combining, and mixing. i had a clear intuition that there was a holistic, ecological, and even spiritual dimension to this practice; it seemed to me that i served as a medium to accommodate new entities and environments coming forth with a life of their own. i was surprised then, and still am 25 years later, that as the only person intimate with the original sound sources i could sometimes lose track of where the sounds came from; it seems that the course and flow of the work might g'o far beyond the actual origins, somehow surpassinlg the source, and create a whole new reality. at those moments i experienced at once an existential remorse and an exhilaration of venturing into the unknown. through this art process sounds could constitute another life in space and time, with the effect of renewing inspiration.
this all happened well before digital sampling became widely available and accessible. my work was done with analogue tools, bringing the raw sound in the environment into a hands-on and necessarily tactile studio process. particular works often began conceptually and collaboratively with colleagues (noted here below), and then were "spliced" into a specific performance, becoming part of living actions that were the creations of their moment in time. my work was also beginning to migrate into other time-based arts and media, bringing it to where it is happening for me today. putting this collection of work together i can see it as the actual foundation of an ongoing lifework.
i would like to thank the following individuals for their encouragement and support of this album: steve pyne, tim leanse, mmichael moss, and angela sawyer; gustavo soto-rosa, omega studios, and mobius artists group; bhob rainey for his fine sense and deft touch in mastering; george quasha for his vision and dialogue with me; my enduring friends, rob list and w endelien haveman; and eric weddle of family vineyard for his understanding, appreciation, and commitment to realizing this project.
boston, ma
july 2007 |
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