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... happy spring everyone !!! to commemorate our favorite season (and to help get this place back to some sort of workable condition) we're having a "spring cleaning" sale !!! please visit the spring (2013) cleaning page to view a list of (recent, mostly 2012) releases that we're now offering at reduced prices (while supplies last, no rainchecks, etc) ...
previous record label:
 sound3 co. ltd. 
there are 2 titles on sourdine in stock.
they are listed below.
next record label:
 southern lord 
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 $12.48

back in stock as of
april 6th, 2009

first in stock on
august 1st, 2008


threads:
electro-acoustic-composition
musique-concrète
minimalism-drones
field-recordings

sourdine (usa) #sd 002 cd

christopher mcfallthe city of almost” compact disc

  • slow containment (16:41)
  • one of several possible endings (8:38)
  • requiem for troost (home) (17:20)
  • all parts contained (13:45)
august 2008 release ; the second release on sourdine, also the second release i’ve seen from kansas city based composer christopher mcfall (whom we were all introduced to via hia recent entr’acte disc) ...

lovely, slight electro-acoustic constructs borne of a series of field recordings made in his native environs ...
sourdine press release...
sd-002: christopher mcfall - the city of almost

8.2008
cd limited to 500 copies

in retrospect, these recordings generate a sense of tremendous nostalgia for me and i consider them to be my most 'musical' works to date. when i began writing these works i had just moved into a new studio building off of troost avenue in kansas city; the studio that i work in currently. this area was once a pinnacle of prosperity for kansas city, as it's avenues were rife with commerce and business. over the decades this sector of the city has since dimished and fallen into ruin, and it's rusting buildings and eroded sidewalks proclaim themselves as a testament to what was and what now may be defined as a 'city of almost.'

thanks to:  h. stewart, juan jose calarco, asher and god.

(text by christopher mcfall)

i have been listening to the work of christopher mcfall for nearly three years now and i am still somewhat at a loss when trying to describe it. he seems to work with location recordings in a way which more about recordings than it is about locations; in fact the locations which the recordings describe are entirely suspect, more a construction than a description. to my ears, christopher is a designer of sound works which are as compelling as they are confounding and through his combining of digital manipulation with physical manipulation, he creates vibrant juxtapositions of concrete sounds with sonic materials which are entirely alien. all of this is to say that i find his works fascinating, and not least for the questions they raise about methodologies of sound design and the transformation of discrete recorded data into a rich web of reference and allusion.

for the album at hand christopher has used recordings of his local landscape of downtown kansas city as well as recordings of an old, found record collection on its owners broken turntable. there is a sense of nostalgia and deterioration, both metaphorical and physical which is palpable in the recordings. the layers of time and the layers of texture both point towards a portrait of our past and our present; a world which is pushing ever forward while the problems of today and yesterday lay waste in the periphery, constantly edging in on our senses of security and beauty.

(text by asher thal-nir)

click the image above to
add this item to your
shopping cart
 $12.48

back in stock as of
april 6th, 2009

first in stock on
march 13th, 2008


threads:
electro-acoustic-composition
electro-acoustic-improvisation
minimalism-drones
digital-musics
field-recordings

 best of 2008 !!! 
sourdine (usa) #sd 001 cd

graceful degradation : variations” compact disc

  • steinbrüchel - shimmer (10:35)
  • kenneth kirschner - april 17th, 2006 (5:35)
  • heribert friedl - rehsa (8:07)
  • john hudak - snd8 (8:55)
  • steve roden - gration degradaceful (5:16)
  • jason kahn - am wasser (5:05)
  • ubeboet - untitled #305 variation (17:26)
debut release on this new label run by up-and-coming composer / sound-designer asher thal-nir (known to most simply by his forename, asher) ; based right here in good ‘ol somerville ...

essentially this is a “reworkings” collection of materials by asher himself, sourced back to a cassette his early minimal loop-based compositions ... and i must say, given the material, he’s chosen a fine range of subjects to transform his music, ranging from steinbrüchel’s grainy, lo-bit digital smear to heribert friedl’s almost raga-ish drone (listen to the sound-sample) to perhaps ubeboet’s most faithful reading, leaving the tape-hiss of the original materials intact ...

a very nice disc & an auspicious start for this new domestic imprint ...
sourdine press release...

sd-001: graceful degradation: variations
2.2008
cd limited to 500 copies
featuring: heribert friedl, john hudak, jason kahn, kenneth kirschner, steve roden, steinbrüchel and ubeboet.

the source recording for the compositions featured on this album still exist on a single 90 minute cassette, made by the intermagnetics corporation from santa monica, california. there are still some bits of led zeppelin here and there which remain among my recordings, but mostly the tape is full of recording i made. i remember working with this tape for several months over the summer and into fall of 2005, in my apartment in brooklyn; i would spend hours going through the material and trying to find different combinations of the recordings of the sounds which are stored on it. after a certain period of time working with the material i put together some pieces for an album release and thought i was done. but in the end i went back and continued working, it is the material from this second period of work which has been used by the artists featured on this release.

the concept of graceful degradation in relation to memory as well as system failure, seemed quite fitting to the work i was doing, as well as to the work of other sound recording artists. there is a relationship that develops between our own memories and recordings made and archived using various data storage and retrieval technologies which i am very interested in; i initiated this project with this interest in mind.

as a continuation of the graceful degradation of my original recordings i asked seven artists to use the material in their own ways to create a new piece. each artist put the material into their systems of working with sound and came up with the results featured on this album. i am very honored to have their contributions and pleased to present them on this first release on sourdine.

previous record label:
 sound3 co. ltd. 
...and that's everything on sourdine in stock.
(why not take a look at the previous and next labels?)
next record label:
 southern lord 
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... this page was last updated on thursday, june 13th, 2013 @ 2:42 pm