C-44 Cassette
2021
The idea for an Afrofuturism St. Louis compilation started in the spring of 2019 as an extension of the Rhizomatic St. Louis compilations of regional underground music I had previously released five volumes of on cassette. The original plan was to have a tape release show, with live performances, in the spring of 2020 at a Bruxism event. I’m thrilled to see it finally published as it has been in limbo since the Covid-19 pandemic. It features excellent work from the following St. Louis-based artists: Virgil Work, Jr., Nadir Smith, 18andCounting, Parisian, Delta Cool Breeze (Itshanapa Dail Chambers), Ra Child, Ariel Kenyatta, Ethiks Mind, Michael Williams, Syna So Pro, and William Morris. It will also be available as a digital download for those that don’t have tape players. Presented in conjunction with a New Music Circle online concert of Nadir Smith and Virgil Work, Jr. premiering on November 8th. Details at www.newmusiccircle.org. All proceeds go to ArchCity Defenders (www.archcitydefenders.org). —Nathan N. Cook
Much appreciation to all the artists who contributed to this compilation. Special thanks to Michael Williams, Jeremy Kannapell, Thomas “Olan” Osunsami and New Music Circle. ‘Divine Reversal’ mixed by Tony Patti.
Produced by Nathan N. Cook & Jeremy Kannapell
Compiled by Nathan N. Cook
Artwork by Nadir Smith
Design by Nathan N. Cook
Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color 5-panel J-cards
Edition of 100
For digital download visit: nnncook.bandcamp.com
SOLD OUT
C-30 Cassette
2019
A distant call
Dissolving of the foreground
An offering turned away
A rhythm for the globe
Chanting in digital pidgin
Syncretism
A chime for the arousal of spirits
Rain drops in an empty vase
An infinite longing—
staring into the horizon
Kneeling in prayer
A chorus of grotesque yawping
No lull within earshot
A swim through liquid borders
Interior lacuna
Oil and water in limbo—
leaking through threaded fingers
objet petit a
Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Design by NNN Cook
Edition of 100 on C456
SOLD OUT
C-24 Cassette
2018
Popular Housing/nebulosa; a split tape of all new compositions from Antonio Leone and Julio Prato—the minds and hearts behind the fantastic St. Louis-based Grownup Music cassette/digital label.
Popular Housing side: Imagine your computer started generating music from untitled ripped MP3s. Forgotten audio files buried deep on a hard drive meld with lo-fi mobile phone recordings that eventually rupture into a novel composition. The result is some kind of contemporary sound collage exotica with self-reflexive internet field recordings narrated by Google Translate in Italian.
nebulosa side: This is dystopian synth pop with a balearic twist via Caracas. "How To Wreck A Nice Beach.” How to recognize speech. How to collect shipwrecked cyborg body parts on a nice beach. Parts of “ open eyelid god ” sounds like it could have been on an electro 12” from '85 that was deleted for being too “out". Listen to it at 2 a.m. while cruising around your city or town and sing along; “draw—the—ridge—of—the—beach—on—the—side— of—my—eyelid.” (island)
—NNN Cook, 4/18
NOTE: Your tape and player are currently working correctly, please listen. Today, Popular Housing is (in order of appearance): Augie Boyne, Cyrus Pireh, Google Translate, Hardbody, Julio Prato, and Antonio Leone. Recorded with IPhone 5s, in and around the tenement.
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Julio Prato
Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Produced, photographed, and designed by NNN Cook
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape
SOLD OUT
C-33 Cassette
2017
New studio recordings commissioned by Close/Far. DAS is a percussionist/drummer and electronic musician who resides in the Missouri Ozarks. Captured on this cassette is a dream-like sequence of visions about specters and haunted spaces manifested through synthesizer and percussion. “Feinted Haunts” is about the line between fascination and fixation where memories can become haunted and how grappling with them can be as perplexing and disturbing as the deepest desire to witness the supernatural.
Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Photography by Derrick A. Strain
Design by NNN Cook
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape
SOLD OUT
C-20 Cassette
2017
Metaphysical cult music for water hunting. The primeval has not evaporated. Dedicated to all the seekers. Blue water. Blue night. Blue thought.
Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Produced and Designed by NNN Cook
Water field recording by Wiggpaw
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape
SOLD OUT
C-53 Cassette
2017
Fifth volume of the annually released compilation. A survey of regional experimental music featuring: sound art, free improvisation, avant-garde jazz, ambient, and electronic music from artists currently living in the St. Louis area.
Featuring:
Pro-duplication and metallic silver Imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Compiled, Produced, & Designed by Nathan N. Cook
Cover Art by Jeremy "Ghost Ice" Kannapell
Inside Photograph by N. Cook
Digital Download Link included
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape
SOLD OUT
C-20 Cassette
2016
In the forest I saw a silver-blue flash. Holes were torn in my memory. Arcanum was bubbling up. When I became ill the world dissolved and a new one emerged. During this time piebald was on the buildings, walls, furniture, grass, trees, and on their faces. It shifted and flowed like light and water. The entire Catalogue d’Oiseaux was an earworm. Reflections rolled over the portrait of John Latham on the wall in my hospital room. After waking, hyacinth phosphene was all I could see. A silver-blue and teal spot, in the shape of a wing, that rippled like fabric in the wind. When the fever finally broke I knew where the mottled stone was located. It oscillated from a monolith to a worry stone depending on who was around or holding it. I think it was snowflake obsidian or dalmatian jasper. The spots kept moving and it's head turned like the hands of a clock. At that moment I understood that I could leave if I wanted to, so I did with the stone in my hand.
—NNN Cook, 1790 or 9071
Pro-duplication with process blue imprinting on clear shells with full color 4-panel (double-sided) J-cards on chrome tape.
Design by NNN Cook
Edition of 100
Digital download link included
SOLD OUT
C-34 Cassette
2016
Wiggpaw is the alter ego of Collinsville, Illinois-based artist and musician, Rick Wilson. You may know his antics in ensembles such as the mythological Skarekrauradio sect, the free/noise group Beauty Pageant, the realm-playing duo of Global Distance (with Rick Weaver) or from any number of other shapeshifting side projects he has been a part of in the last couple decades of underground music and performance art taking place in the St. Louis metropolitan area. You may not know his solo material as Wiggpaw which is full of pagan forest magic, pulsing electronics, nature field recordings, junk percussion, and warped song; a concoction that he has dubbed “fieldcore.” All the nature field recordings were captured by Wiggpaw from creeks, springs, and rivers in North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and Illinois during the mornings, afternoons, and evenings throughout the last several years. Downer Lip is comprised of a pulsing nocturnal fairy tale rhapsodizing about water, a warped electronic freak-folk song about being a firefighter in a dream, late night insect song, flickering candles, and the relentless rush of glinting streams in the midday sun. Overall Downer Lip is as hermetic and tenebrist as it is bright and garish just as the weird woods of the Midwest and South are.
Pro-duplication and metallic silver Imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards.
Photographs by Wiggpaw
Design by NNN Cook
Edition of 100
Digital download included by request
SOLD OUT
C-30 Cassette
2016
Featuring commissioned studio works of new electronic and percussion pieces, recorded in 2016, utilizing Kyma, SeeSaw drumming, and modular synthesizer.
The multi facets of Rich O'Donnell span 60 years as virtuoso percussionist, improviser, composer, designer and builder of percussion and electronic instruments, teacher and writer. He is director of the Electronic Music Studio at Washington University in St. Louis, and co-founder of HEARDing Cats Collective. He was 43 years with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, most of them as principal percussionist.
"I have been playing with electronics for only seven years less than playing percussion instruments, (started at seven). For me, there is no difference how I create the sounds. My DIY percussion instruments often sound electronic and electronics reflect my percussion experience. I think like a drummer. I have a large collection of "standard" instruments, but would much prefer to create new ones that reflect my "sound junkie" imagination. A musical instrument must respond instantly, and effortlessly to the neuron message sent—just like talking.
With Kyma, there's no delay, or even a bridge from my right brain to my ears. It's taken years, but it's here now. My aim is to create a playing situation that evokes imagination and unique environment for both the listener and myself.
One side is SeeSaw drumming/Kyma. A percussion solo interacting with a Kyma, (the most sophisticated digital synthesizer available. google it). I play ABSTRACT DRUMMING (14:05), with little reference to other types of playing.
The other side includes DREAM VOICES (11:28), Kyma solo controlled by wiimote and nunchuck. They control the sound produced in real time. This is all digital.
Then, SLOW AWAKENING (3:00). Played on analog Eurosynth modules with a touch controller of my own design and construction.
"All pieces are real time improvisations."
—Rich O’Donnell, 2016
Pro-duplication and metallic silver Imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Cover Art and Design by NNN Cook
Edition of 100 on Chrome tape
Digital download link included
SOLD OUT
C-54 Cassette
2016
Fourth volume of the annually released compilation of Sound Art, Free Improvisation, Electronic & Electroacoustic music from artists currently living and working in the St. Louis area.
Featuring:
Pro-duplication and metallic silver Imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Compiled, Produced, & Designed by Nathan N. Cook
Cover Art by Jeremy "Ghost Ice" Kannapell
Mastered by Jonathan James
Digital download link included
Edition of 100 on Chrome tape
SOLD OUT
C20 Cassette
2016
Singing Monads are my kinetic sound sculptures utilizing hanging cymbals with motorized wooden-wheels attached to them. The motorized wheel, once powered on, rolls and strikes against the cymbal in such a way that it excites a dance of shimmering overtones with ever shifting patterns of metallic harmonics. Conceptually the form of the cymbal is focused on as a study of sacred geometry, archetypes, semiotics, symbols, motion, cycles, and seasons. It also references the Quadrivium: the four liberal arts of number, geometry, music, and cosmology, which states "Geometry is number in space, music is number in time, and the cosmos expresses number in space and time." From this stems a study of the monad, which the Quadrivium states, "is simultaneously circle, center, and the purest tone."
—NNN Cook
Professionally duplicated and printed.
Recorded by Jonathan James.
Full color four-panel J-cards.
Edition of 50 on Chrome Tape.
SOLD OUT
C20 Cassette
2015
JoAnn McNeil - voice, electronics / NNN Cook - computer
REVIEW of Afrofuturism Now! performance, Rotterdam, 2015: "Nyfolt’s cosmic tapestries of sound emanate a strong Cyberpunk aesthetic, as well as a Gristle-ish propensity to experiment with spaces. This becomes evident right off the bat when JoAnn McNeil and Nathan Cook meander between audience members with tape recorders, whistles and minimal percussion. The first instinct is to simply close your eyes and allow these sprawling soundscapes to trickle down your psyche.
Nyfolt provides a nice counterbalance to Moor Mother Goddess’s riveting and frantic performance, maintaining a sweltering slow-burning pace throughout. Their blueprint is unlike anything I’ve heard before. McNeil, who’s a great singer, briefly sequesters a wistful, almost sacramental grace at one point, as if is transmitting a universal hymn or anthem into the galaxy.
For the most part, Nyfolt’s show progressed a tenuous sonic tightrope walk: sinister Coil-like industrial backdrops seamlessly bleed into kinetic Dan Deacon-like buoyancy, as well as the inversive spoken word meditations of Laurie Anderson’s post-modern classic Big Science. Don’t let all these reference points fool you though: Nyfolt is a true original, instilling all these different proponents into a uniquely devised vernacular. Amazing!"
—Jasper Willems (Louder Than War)
Professionally duplicated and printed
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape.
SOLD OUT
C21 Cassette
2015
Cassette edition documenting Cook's sound installation in the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis' elevator for the Audible Interruptions sound art series in 2014.
Gallery Guide
Contemporary Art
Museum St. Louis
January 24 – April 13, 2014
Audible Interruptions is a series of site-specific sound installations that investigate the sonic identity of the museum’s architecture. First presented in fall 2013 and continuing through summer 2014, the three-part series features works that occupy museum areas— the restrooms, a hallway, and the elevator—that are not traditionally used for displaying art, removing distinctions between exhibition and common spaces. Such utilitarian environments, having a specific and limited purpose, typically do not promote thoughtful analysis and are used in mechanical and unconscious ways. By re-inventing the aural and conceptual landscapes of these areas, the works in Audible Interruptions offer a unique experience, helping us discover new and unexpected ways to interact with architecture and rethink familiar places.
Audible Interruptions is a yearlong exhibition series organized for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis by guest curator Kevin Harris, a St. Louis-based artist, musician, and engineer.
Nathan Cook often presents live sound art performances that invite unique interactions with the audience and where patience, commitment, and engagement are rewarded with meditative and thought-provoking soundscapes. With Transmutation Passages, Cook uses the controlled environment of the elevator to explore the relationship between sound and space. Four separate pieces rotate over the course of the exhibition, each using sound to encourage a novel way of experiencing the movement of the elevator.
I. Driving: Spatial Displacement Digital stereophonic audio, 6:23 minutes Driving: Spatial Displacement uses cassette recordings Cook made while driving on highways. The raw field recordings from under the hood, outside the car window, and inside the vehicle were edited, layered, and arranged. The result provokes memories and induces the feeling of horizontal movement while the setting of the elevator provides a simultaneous, contrasting experience of vertical movement through space.
II. Network Overheat Digital stereophonic audio, 4:03 minutes The claustrophobic setting of the elevator is paired with an anxiety-inducing electronic score, encouraging passengers to question their level of trust and to what extent they are willing to surrender to technology.
III. Verticality: The Fountain of Bliss Digital stereophonic audio, 5:00 minutes Verticality: The Fountain of Bliss is a layered arrangement of digital field recordings of several local water fountains. The work playfully reinforces the vertical movement of the elevator while inviting poetic interpretations of the sound of falling water, re-contextualized in an unlikely interior.
IV. Enter as Flesh and Exit as Gold Digital stereophonic audio, 4:00 minutes Enter as Flesh and Exit as Gold was created by manipulating the pitch of several electronic oscillators in order to generate subtly shifting waves of harmonic overtones. At first listen, the work is awash in static. The chamber of the elevator facilitates focused attention however, revealing a myriad of pulses and beating patterns.
Professionally duplicated and printed. With color double-sided, 4-panel j-cards. Digital download link included
Mastered by Jonathan James
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape.
SOLD OUT
C42 Cassette
2015
Alex is a St. Louis-based guitarist and violinist originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His sensibilities and prowess range from extended technique/experimental playing in solo and group free improvisational settings to performing composed post-rock in Hardbody alongside members of Spelling Bee and Stonechat. The latest entry into the Close/Far catalogue is Alex's new tape "Kinesthetics" featuring nine solo improvisations on violin. Overall the collection displays a very distinct quality of earnestness and alertness while communicating with a spectacular vocabulary of texture, rhythm, and gesture making it quite a stunning debut solo recording.
Professionally duplicated and printed. Digital download link included.
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape.
SOLD OUT
C55 Cassette
2014
Close/Far Recordings is positively elated to publish an unreleased version of Schlingen-Blängen, from Charlemagne Palestine's personal archives, recorded in 1977. Palestine considers it to be the first official recorded version of Schlingen-Blängen that pre-dates the only other published version, recorded in 1988, by eleven years. Both pieces were performed on the same church pipe organ in Delfzijl, Holland by the North Sea. Because the master was recorded on cassette, informing the character and atmosphere of the piece, and since this new edition is once again on cassette, Charlemagne has named it SchlingenCassettenBlängen. This analog magnetic tape captured version from '77 is exquisitely dark and humid in comparison to the wonderfully bright and crisp digitally recorded version from '88. It will also be the first full-length solo Charlemagne Palestine work ever released on cassette.
SchlingenCassettenBlängen is colored by the nuances and flaws of being a decades-old cassette tape which Charlemagne feels embellishes the recording, making it a special new work. Or as he says "It'sssss Casssettennnn magiccccc!!!" The intermittent speed warping and out of tune tape sliding invites a rich dialogue with the mechanics of the cassette itself and fundamentally with time. Clocking in at 90 minutes long it stretches out in an ethereal fashion that is simultaneously ruminative and tempestuous documenting Charlemagne's organ playing in a particularly elegiac, painterly, and ultimately sublime mode. Fortunately, this important but hidden early document is now preserved enabling us to experience a very special chapter in Palestine's recorded oeuvre highlighted by a truly ecstatic final passage that stands amongst his most emotive, mystical, and powerful moments.
—N.N.N. Cook, 10/14
"It was originallly recordedd,,, in the northh of Holland in a little village called Delfzijl and was organised byy Leendert van Lagestein for his art centre Corps de Garde in Groningen in 1977!!"
—Charlemagne Palestine
Note: Charlemagne has stated "I’d like it to startttt and finishhh exactlyyyy as on the originallll, nO ChaNgEsssszzzz!!!! Nothingggg omittteddd..." Because of this there are a couple moments where the audio abruptly but very briefly cuts out. This is intentional and true to the content of the original cassette recording.
Comes in a special printed outer sleeve wrapped around the Norelco case
Featuring new and archival artwork by Charlemagne Palestine
With color and b+w double-sided, 4-panel j-cards
In an edition of 369 (at Charlemagne's request)
Color imprinting on clear shells w/clear liners
90 minutes, Chrome Type II, High-bias tape
Professionally duplicated and printed
Digital download link included
Mastered by Jonathan James
Published December 3, 2014
First Edition SOLD OUT
Second Edition SOLD OUT
C32 Cassette
2014
Part of the world-wide cabal of experimental home-tapers, St. Louis-based Thomas Sutter, cut his teeth during the heyday of early 1980s underground cassette culture. His Regicide Bureau project has been running strong for 30+ years publishing his exploits as an electroacoustic trickster of sorts. Around 400 cassettes and CD-Rs of his head-scratching and genre-defying sound art and music have been put out to date. Many of these editions are concept albums, displaying a range of sounds from the pensive to the chaotic, with themes relating to esoteric Buddhist teachings released via his own private imprint and through an impressive list of legendary 80s tape labels such as Sound of Pig, HalTapes, Deaf Eye, and Harsh Reality Music. DaoDaoism is a collaboration of an opaque and mystical nature with NNN Cook working merely as an assistant towards Sutter's role as he puts it a "midwife to enigmas."
Pro-duplication and black imprinting on white shells with color double-sided j-cards.
Edition of 50 on Chrome tape.
SOLD OUT
C55 Cassette
2014
Third volume of the annually released compilation of Sound Art, Free Improvisation, Electronic & Electroacoustic music from artists currently living and working in the St. Louis area.
Featuring:
Pro-duplication and metallic silver imprinting with full color double sided j-cards. Limited edition of 50 posters and cover art by Jeremy "Ghost Ice" Kannapell. Digital download link included. Edition of 100 on chrome tape.
SOLD OUT
C40 Cassette
2014
Here's a couple meditations on dance music best listened to in empty night clubs:
Wam the Rat-Boi walks through the door an hour late, with a live rat perched on his shoulder, clutching retro Halloween decorations, a vintage Minnie Mouse jacket, and some old Korgs. This trio of finely crafted electronic pulses go nowhere because they have nowhere to be.
NNN returns with a 20-minute trance inducing track of electronic rumble inspired by daydreams of internet teleportation, corporeal rave sublimation, high-speed drives through desert mirages, and neo-platonic cyber mysticism.
Side A: Wamhoda
Scheduled Visit - Fixate Fade - Shrunken Hedz
Side B: N.N.N. Cook
Body Over Internet Protocol: ~888CALL888~
Pro-duplication and teal imprinting on 1987 gray shells with full color double sided j-cards.
Edition of 100 on chrome tape.
SOLD OUT
C67 Cassette
2013
Second volume of the annually released compilation of Sound Art, Free Improvisation, Electronic & Electroacoustic music from artists currently living and working in the St. Louis area.
Featuring:
Pro-duplication and metallic silver imprinting with full color double sided j-cards. Limited edition of 75 posters and cover art by Jeremy "Ghost Ice" Kannapell. Digital download link included. Edition of 150 on chrome tape.
SOLD OUT
C30 Cassette
2013
Two nonsectarian pieces of contemporary American electronic music utilizing a customized eurorack modular synthesizer on the Harris side and computer software on the Cook side. The composition by Mr. Harris was created in response to the composition by Mr. Cook.
Side A: Kevin Harris – NI6B^RR [Food Poisoning] {Funding for Disagreement}
Side B: N.N.N. Cook – Furuzanfar #568 w/ Sine Qua Non Memories
Pro-duplication and metallic gold imprinting with black and white double sided j-cards.
Edition of 100 on chrome tape.
SOLD OUT
C72 Cassette
2012
A compilation of Sound Art, Free Improvisation, Electronic & Electroacoustic music from artists currently living and working in the St. Louis area.
Featuring:
Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double sided j-cards. Signed and numbered silkscreened posters (edition of 25), signed and numbered digital prints (edition of 75) and cover art by Jeremy "Ghost Ice" Kannapell. Edition of 200 on high bias tape.
SOLD OUT
Handmade Clay Edition with printed CD-R
2011
Listen to the songs and purchase at BandCamp
C60 Cassette
2011
Side A: Prune, by Coppice, is a 30-minute composition for tape studying foundation reduction, threshold permutation, mercurial residue, and compression techniques. Recorded in Chicago in late 2010 using pump organ, fire bellows, push-pump organ, samples, and electronic processing. Coppice (Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer) is a Chicago-based duet of bellows and electronics. Formed 2009, they have produced original compositions for stage, fixed media, and performed installation settings, with a focus on adhering textural attenuation, processed gradation, the contours of instrumentation, and their multiple aspect highlights. Their variable instrumentation departs from bellows and reed instruments (accordion, pump organ, shruti box, harmonica), custom electronics (reproduction, transmission, spatialization, interference and gentle feedback), and multi-channel systems adapted in ways responsive to location, audience flow, and aural perspectives. They have recently appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Art, New Music at the Green Mill (Chicago); Music with a View (New York); Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts (Minneapolis); Dragonfly Festival (Göthenburg, Sweden); and several live radio performances.
Side B: Two new works from N.N.N. Cook chosen to accompany Prune. Wu Wei I: Repose features the texture of select materials arranged in order to accentuate the color of each while inducing horizontal and vertical spatial movement. Material (and non-material) sources include: baoding balls, brass censer, feedback, porcelain vase, tape, voice, wine glass, and wooden flute. Wu Wei II: Impulse is the first 18 minutes excerpted from a 40-minute improvisation on electric organ. The meditative state involved in the creation/listening process and the immersive quality of engaging in the perception of the beats, overtones, and shading are its focus.
SOLD OUT
CD-R
2010
Jazz excursions into spider pits, radios left on in abandoned malls, two dummies hunching over tables full of garbage. Cringing behind their digital gate, delayed no longer, Encrypted Crypt unleash warlocks, boredom and nausea upon an indifferent public. Their debut album, Lambent Radionics, is filled to the brim with five unpleasant tracks. "Turn up the Fog!" Truly a bargain for the discerning consumer. Prepare for apocalyptic visions, mild memory loss, and/or panic attacks! Strictly Limited Edition of approximately 47.
SOLD OUT
C62 Cassette
2010
This one is for the underground home-taping heads. Hailing from St. Louis, Thomas Sutter's Regicide Bureau project has been running strong since the mid-80s. His prolific output of heavily electroacoustic sonic alchemy has been documented on cassette by such labels as Sound of Pig, Deaf Eye, Ecto Tapes, HalTapes, and Harsh Reality Music, while releasing more than 300 recordings on his own hypermedia imprint. After delving into only a small portion of the catalogue, it's easy to see that the Regicide Bureau oeuvre fits nicely alongside such home-taping legends as If, Bwana, Hal Mcgee and Minóy. Noise heads: don't sleep on this one!
Toadflax, an unreleased noisescape from 2009, is all at once raw, refined, abrasive, and elegant. Tom's approach to sound is a painterly one—sonic chiaroscuro. One moment there is a jarring rift of noise, and the next a haunting melody fights through controlled feedback. Along the way signals abruptly cut out, as if exhausted, only to reappear after shape-shifting in silence. Documented on this tape, true to ritualistic form, is a glimpse into the Regicide Bureau microcosm of chaos and contemplation. The atmosphere here is a disorienting one, like being in a deep fever dream wandering lost through an endless field of purple toadflax.
SOLD OUT
On the A side is a new track commissioned specifically for close/far recordings. Sig. to Ether Error seems to channel a distant astral oratorio. Slowly your mind's eye is activated and begins to build its own temple. Reconciling the synthetic with the organic, Raglani coaxes a state of concord between himself and his circuitry.
On the B side the primary sound source is an electronic unit, the Meridian Box, custom designed and built by Joseph Kramer. It consists of six oscillators with independent pitch controls and electrodes controlled by body resistance. Otherness Figments immediately sweeps you into its current, enveloping your body with hum and crackle. Punctuated by blasts and tears in time, jarring moments begin to smear and stretch. As you pan across your barren destination, mirages dance across the landscape. Abruptly, your Dionysian journey ends in repose.
SOLD OUT
CD-R and Digipack
2004
The entire album was made on my computer using soft synths and samplers in 2004. Over the course of a year I worked on it in solitude. The primary focus of the album is of personal understanding and fruition through deep listening, meditation, and reflection. A sine qua non is something that is essential or absolutely necessary. The essential in positive human thought and behavior is what I am seeking. I believe that empathy, honesty, patience, and humility are the most important archetypal concepts in humanity. They have the power to heal and prevent many of our problems.
Throughout my life as a music lover and obsessive collector my favorite albums have prompted me to investigate the meanings and messages of their titles and lyrics. Because of the curiosity and inspiration they have created this has allowed me to gain some understanding of many individuals' perspectives through their art, stories, and music. By this very natural process between creator and listener the album becomes an evocative and emotive vehicle for communication and learning. The purpose of this work is to utilize these aspects of the album as a cultural catalyst and to encourage personal reflection on what empathy, honesty, patience, and humility mean to each of us in our lives. This album is a sonic enzyme for contemplation.
CD-R and Jewel Case
2006
Formally, the music is comprised of improvisatory selections taken from various recording locations. In addition to the advent of sparse collaboration, we have at times become compositionally focused on the rawness and intimacy of acoustic instrumentation. The documentation of these performances has enabled us to better understand our reactions to the spaces that we have encountered. The overall tone along with fleeting lyrics suggests ideas about resolution and objectivity, duality, cosmology, responsibility, and aural flux rather than any sort of musical virtuosity. The Halcyon and The Mendicant is ritualistic.
3 x 3" CD-Rs
2004
These three "twenty-minute pieces" are solo, written compositions created to explore our interests as individuals versus our norm of group instant composition. The fixed duration as an initial objective functioned first as an equal allocation of time to use as individual composers, with regard to our average group improvisation length of one hour. Second, the timeframe sensitivity forced the compositions into temporal works not only by their explicit nature but also through the acuteness of our intentions. This time regulation undermined a completely expressionist approach to the works, which was important because the timeframe requisite pushed us to design and develop the pieces with a unified intention without cornering us into predetermined themes and emotional attributes. Calyx is an exercise in separation.
CD-R and Jewel Case
2004
This release is an hour long, continuous improvisation presented as an example of a live, real-time composition, free from edits and alterations. Although it is somewhat atypical of the bulk of our session recordings in general, the work has a consistent mood over its many fluctuating movements. As we are engaged in an ongoing musical dialogue with ourselves and our listeners, this is to be taken as an excerpt within our body of work, the implicit metaphor within the title, Blade of Grass Single is Mass--a documentation of the vocabulary forming as we continue to improvise together.
CD-R and Jewel Case
2004
Throughout the course of 2004 we were happy to have captured so many hours of our improvised music. That winter we decided to carefully listen to those recordings and select the most interesting and/or cohesive moments. This reminded us of the extraction process that many resources go through in order to become a finished product or unified whole, if you will. We found the parallel between our sound selection process and the extraction process of tree sap to be an appropriate analogy: both procedures utilize materials created naturally, and each refines them through specific processes in order to manifest a desired outcome. In order to put the focus on the essence and the process, not just the finished product, we chose Sap as the title and named the movements after trees, tapping tools, soil levels, and sap gradients--after all, it takes forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. Likewise, all of the tracks were extracted from live, real-time takes to an eight-track with minimal alterations made for more fluid movements. Sap is excerpt appropriate.
