This two-track, 28-minute EP combines modular electronics and samples in expansive, slowly-building pulses and shifting rhythms. Fragments of audio are embroidered in both real and retrospective time – sourcing extractions of sound from years of experimentation, reconfigured in waves of probability. These two long pieces are designed for late-night listening, or other moments when hours flow smoothly. Patterns unfolding slowly, and through gradual accretion. Release 3 in a 50th year, digital series.
released February 3, 2024 cover art by Harrison Higgs
(else)where is a collaboration with sound artist Bruno Duplant and photographers TJ Norris + Harrison Higgs, consisting of two CDs and 10 cards in a box set. Fifteen soundscapes, each a consistent length (5:00, 10:00) are placed in conversation with 19 images, each a pairing of halves. Cards and sounds may be shuffled by the listener to create new juxtapositions. A poem by David Grubbs completes the set.
Distant instruments and voices, corroded melodies, electronic insects and low tones drift across a series of unedited field recordings – captured moments in time and space. A dream narrative emerges from fractured frames. Intersections of locations contain a collection of deceptions, interruptions and overlays. Discovered textures are placed alongside sculptural interventions and synthetic manipulations, in dialogue with the accidental.
This 7-track, 30-minute EP is a collection of dark ambient drones, an ode to the corrosive and decaying aspects of nature. Layers of modular synth and processed vocals extend across waves of noise and static. Slow-motion melting of stone, rivers of molten wax, the flutter of oceanic tides. With additional vocals by Becky Miller, marimba and metallophone by Loren Chasse.
These five pieces, created over a period of five days in May – June 2021, were composed from field recordings, detuned piano, modular and software synths, and found objects. They were originally made to accompany the Auxart 1 installation by Philip Krohn, and were later remixed to stereo. Recorded and layered as long improvisational takes, these pieces represented a somewhat new way of working – a kind of sonic diary that captured a particular moment in time, including its weather, insects and birds. Accepting of accidents, embracing small gestures, embedding accretions of time. Lightly edited into loose forms, the five sections wander slowly across a landscape, and occasionally stumble across a surprising shape.
CD released on Stellage, 2021. (eco)systems is a mix of acoustic instruments, field recordings, digital and analogue synths, structured in algorithmic cycles, random fluctuations, slow evolutions and large timescales, networks of events, systems of repetition, interactions between sound characters, a movement of cut / copy / paste, erase & rewrite in an endlessly renewed back and forth, a fluid and evocative movement, until two ecosystems emerged, as fictitious as they are real.
“Across two numerically titled pieces the duo simulate and explore various biomes, weather conditions, environments and creatures. Insect-like chirps echo in cavernous spaces, distorting synthesizers disintegrate into silence. At one moment thumping rhythms resemble a creature’s heartbeat, at another you hear what sounds like rainfall deep in a deciduous forest during a summer storm. Synthetic, almost cinematic soundscapes slowly morph into imagined underwater worlds, only to dissolve into vast, falling waterfalls. More serene, almost ambient passages evoke rays of sunlight piercing through clouds after intense rainfall.
There is an incredibly impressive fluidity and variety to Duplant’s and Nehil’s work on (eco)systems. Sound sources intertwine and morph in disorienting ways, as a listener you’re constantly being transported by the evocative nature of the music. The dizzying complexity of these pieces seemingly ignores the ocean that separates these two artists – one based in Northern France, the other in the Western United States. (eco)systems sounds like two well-acquainted friends in yet another deep conversation.”
Bounds treats recorded sound as infinitely malleable; from grains to pulses to pitches to rhythms, loops and cycles; interruptions, repetitions, spaces, pauses; strings in a continuum. Sounds sourced from percussion instruments, subjected to techniques of micro-editing and impulse-response reverb. Acoustic events become alien tones in strata of (artificial) real space.
Cassette, 26 min. Draft Records D020, edition of 100 Artwork by Harrison Higgs.
Meticulously edited studio constructions composed of metallic rattles and impacts, vocal whoops and grunts, and digital silence. A refined use of digital editing techniques gives way to jagged repetitive structures, arrhythmic punk and wild cinematic spaces. Percussive elements are fused together, extracted from found objects, field recordings, synthetic tones, crashes, and drum machine thuds. The textures of hip hop, electronic, industrial and noise are filtered through the craft of musique concrete and sound design. These miniatures serve as a more synthetic and noisy partner to Knives (released in 2009 on Senufo).
Seth Nehil 