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Seitz Versus Gendreau "S/T" LP
Seitz Versus Gendreau is a collaborative experiment in using concrete music compositional strategies.
These pieces were composed with created and found sound captured in San Francisco.
Chorus After Rains: A strategy where we each use the same raw sound clips with different results. The two pieces are then melded to create one piece of music, the different modules becoming inseparable from each other.
Things Lost That Will Never Be Found: A composition with live instruments, moving from a toy piano to various invented motor instruments; a piece that transitions from melody to noise.
Trains Will Not Stop: Another Grand Surface Noise opera (Nr. 9), using the various sounds from records, composed by Gendreau and re-mixed by Seitz using accelerometer recordings collected in San Francisco during 2005.
SEITZ, based in Oakland, California and formerly a member of Taxodiaceae, makes a rare foray into recording. Seitz is fascinated by the re-contextualization of ephemeral sound such as- streams from radio, lost and forgotten records, tangents of passing conversation, fragmented voicemails, pieces of cassettes sound, field recordings by amateurs, tv movie themes, and random and despised podcasts- and the breakdown of the music bubble that surrounds most contemporary music consumers. Seitz envisions a world where listeners actually listen and no music is fetishized.
GENDREAU has composed and performed solo, as well as in several group configurations since 1979. His former group Crawling With Tarts (1983-1998) used ideas revolving around elementalism and pre-language states. Gendreau has elaborated on these ideas while adding concepts based on his studies in physics, philosophies attending to temporal and environmental persistence, applications of parataxis, and experiments with small motors and turntable mechanisms. His performances have involved sounds from one-off transcription discs cast by others in the middle of the last century, and those cut in his studio using a decrepit lathe. More recently, Gendreau has sought to extend these later studies, and to use buildings as a speaker. He records the infrasonic vibrations of the performance space and in the concert, he uses the structure's resonances as an additional instrument in his site-specific compositions. These practices are based in part on his current work as an acoustician, working primarily on low-vibration and noise design for buildings.
Released in a limited edition of 90 copies, packaged in deluxe tip-on jacket.
Vertonen "HACE/26,250' b/w 11° 22.4'N 142° 35.5'E" LP
The audio on this LP was inspired by early efforts to explore extreme locations on earth, and the clash between the will of humans, the limits of their bodies, and the immutable laws of the natural world-the latter which can easily destroy both of the first two.
The 11° 22.4'N 142° 35.5'E" side is based on the 1960 dive by Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh in the bathyscaphe Trieste to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point on earth.
This side aims to mirror the combination of analytic scientific preparation and calibration that the team did and the inherent and unavoidable human concern of "if something goes wrong, there's a good chance we could die."
The HACE/26,250' side was inspired by research on High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE), a condition where oxygen is not getting to the brain.
HACE has the greatest potential for striking in the Dead Zone, (26,250 feet), where available oxygen cannot sustain human life for more that 3 hours. Of course, for someone aiming to summit Mt Everest, there are "only" 2,750 feet remaining-and, the person still has to descend back through the Dead Zone. With their goal so closely in reach, a climber may sacrifice the rational (saving their life) for the sake of achieving their goal (summiting Everest).
HACE/26,250' is a soundtrack for a body closing down; heart rates slowing, blood flow slowing, everything once moist and carrying life slowly becoming brittle, dry, and unable to function due to duress.
Vertonen is Blake Edwards and devices-for this LP, the primary device is a Russian Polivoks synthesizer. Based in Chicago, Illinois, Edwards has performed at numerous festivals in the US, as well as toured the US and Japan. In addition to numerous 7" records, 3" CDRs, full-length CDRs, and split 12" records, Vertonen also has released three CDs funded by City of Chicago grants (as is this record).
This is a split label release with C.I.P. (http://cipsite.net/)
Released in a limited edition of 200 copies, packaged in deluxe tip-on jacket.
http://www.misanthropicagenda.com
http://www.misanthropicagenda.com