An Occupied Space is the debut full-length release by Los Angeles artist Robert Crouch. Each track takes as its point of departure a field recording of a public place where music is integral to the experience of these social constructs. Throughout the release, music is piped through loudspeakers across public plazas and boulevards, footsteps cross thresholds where reverberating guitars and vocals spill out into city. “I found it necessary to give myself a very strict set of parameters,” Crouch states, “in order to approach the idea of making music in the first place. I suppose it comes from my training as a visual artist.”
Furthering this analogy to a visual arts practice, 'An Occupied Space' has perhaps more in common with the photographers from the Düsseldorf School, rather than the history of field recording or ambient music. Much like the photographers Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Ruff, and how they wrestle with both the psychology of their subject matter as well as the politics and constraints of their chosen medium, An Occupied Space can be considered to be a collection of landscape studies, with the artist fulfilling the roles of documentarian, composer, and observer simultaneously.
Structurally, 'An Occupied Space' operates within overlapping contexts; they exist as documents, as meditations on the psychology of place, and finally as self-reflexive “objects” that address the contingent nature of their own construction. They are as much about music as they are music. “I wanted to employ melody without necessarily being melodic, to explore texture without remaining static, and to respect the integrity of the original recordings while still allowing my hand as artist to remain evident.”
I really enjoyed this - just like the box in the cover.
not as old... 2014 Gabriel Saloman - Movement Building Vol.1 Emusic
from Bandcamp Over the past few years Gabriel Saloman has developed a reputation for releasing penetrating works of haunting beauty in his new role as a solo performer and composer. Known for his part in the seminal electronic-noise duo Yellow Swans (alongside Pete Swanson), Saloman has taken the sweeping drones and fried electricity of his former band and embedded them within an expanding pallette of bowed strings, martial percussion and resonant piano. The majority of his work to date has been developed as music for contemporary dance, exemplified by two recent solo albums with Miasmah, 2012’s melancholic Adhere and last years celebrated ode to mud and decay Soldier’s Requiem. As he continues to prolifically produce music for dance, Saloman has developed a new series with Shelter Press to make these works available: Movement Building.
The first of two volumes to be released individually on vinyl and together on CD, The Disciplined Body is a 34 minute work that moves through ghostly minimalist drones, poly-vocal drumming and culminates in an aching climb through sheets of shimmering guitar chords before erupting in a violent spurt of harsh noise. While at its climax it may be evocative of transcendental string manglers ranging from My Bloody Valentine to Godspeed You Black Emperor, in its more subtle moments it wades through the kind of blackened water that suggests the outer boundaries of ambient metal, or the ghostly remnants of a cassette dub of beatless electronics. Composed for Daisy Karen Thompson’s “Re-Marks on Source Material”, the music shares that dance’s Foucault influenced questioning of the limits imposed on our bodies by technology and labor, reaching for an ecstatic escape from discipline and control. Listeners may want to reach for the same - to do so we suggest they play this recording very very loud.
Thanks.......!....Terrific! (I took their suggestion)
Composed by La Monte Young Arranged and performed by Gabriel Saloman
In 1960 the American minimalist composer La Monte Young created a
collection of over a dozen conceptual compositions that included
elements of performance art, extra-musical actions and zen influenced
poetics. These works, which became known as Compositions 1960, were some
of the earliest examples of Fluxus-inspired event scores, and in the
case of Compositions 1960 #7
(a depiction of the notes B3 and F#4 with the instruction “to be held
for a very long time”) one of the earliest examples of minimalism. For
this commissioned work I produced a piece that takes Young’s 1960’s
compositions as constituent parts to a whole, integrating multiple
interpretations of the individual compositions into a singular piece. It
is an attempt at practicing the radical permission that Young seems to
be implying in the work, allowing each of those pieces to be a platform
for creation, an intervention into my own modes of creation and a
problem or puzzle to be solved.
The completed piece emerged from
attempts to selectively engage Young’s compositions as starting points
for sonic creation and then arranging those diverse elements into a
singular coherent work. In this way the final project isn’t a
performance of any one of his compositions (or a re-performance of any
of their interpretations) but rather a homage to his thinking, his
influence and the potentials for conceptual scores to unlock creativity
from the chains of habit.
Commissioned by the CRES Media Arts Committee, 2015.
I've been realizing again this past week the degree to which the serendipitous pathways along which I have gradually extended my knowledge of jazz have left gaps when it comes to knowing about female jazz musicians, whether long-successful (Terri Lyne Carrington) or new (Melissa Aldana) - these names are new to me in the past few days and I also rediscovered Roberta Piket on my SFL. Good stuff.
- "This
film without words is composed of Pamela Bone's unique photograhic
transparencies. Her talent has been said to 'push photography beyond
its own limits, liberating it to the status of an entirely creative art
form.` Inspired by nature, and being more responsive to feeling than to
thought, Miss Bone has sought to express the mystery and beauty of the
inner vision through photographic means alone: landscape has the
quality of a dream; children on the sea-shore have a sense of their own
enchantment, trees are forboding and strange when night moves in their
arms. It took Miss Bone twenty years to find the right technique and so
overcome the limitations that photography would impose."
Maybe it's because I had this first (by a long time) but I still love this compilation more than Entertainment. Sure Entertainment has the best songs, but there are a lot of great ones from later too, like Cheeseburger, To Hell With Poverty, We Live as We Dream, Alone, etc.
Finally got to my holiday week, spent to early part of the day sorting out my Sonos which is finally working again, first play North Atlantic Explorers - My Father was a Sailor
Comments
ps- 2011
Robert Crouch - Discogs
Mastered By – Taylor Deupree
from Bandcamp
Furthering this analogy to a visual arts practice, 'An Occupied Space' has perhaps more in common with the photographers from the Düsseldorf School, rather than the history of field recording or ambient music. Much like the photographers Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Ruff, and how they wrestle with both the psychology of their subject matter as well as the politics and constraints of their chosen medium, An Occupied Space can be considered to be a collection of landscape studies, with the artist fulfilling the roles of documentarian, composer, and observer simultaneously.
Structurally, 'An Occupied Space' operates within overlapping contexts; they exist as documents, as meditations on the psychology of place, and finally as self-reflexive “objects” that address the contingent nature of their own construction. They are as much about music as they are music. “I wanted to employ melody without necessarily being melodic, to explore texture without remaining static, and to respect the integrity of the original recordings while still allowing my hand as artist to remain evident.”
I really enjoyed this - just like the box in the cover.
Robert Crouch - A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth
Apr 22, 2016
from Bandcamp
Mastered by Lawrence English.
Ps- another really interesting listen!
Gabriel Saloman - Soldier's Requiem
2013
emusic
Bandcamp
2014
Gabriel Saloman - Movement Building Vol.1
Emusic
from Bandcamp
Over the past few years Gabriel Saloman has developed a reputation for releasing penetrating works of haunting beauty in his new role as a solo performer and composer. Known for his part in the seminal electronic-noise duo Yellow Swans (alongside Pete Swanson), Saloman has taken the sweeping drones and fried electricity of his former band and embedded them within an expanding pallette of bowed strings, martial percussion and resonant piano. The majority of his work to date has been developed as music for contemporary dance, exemplified by two recent solo albums with Miasmah, 2012’s melancholic Adhere and last years celebrated ode to mud and decay Soldier’s Requiem. As he continues to prolifically produce music for dance, Saloman has developed a new series with Shelter Press to make these works available: Movement Building.
The first of two volumes to be released individually on vinyl and together on CD, The Disciplined Body is a 34 minute work that moves through ghostly minimalist drones, poly-vocal drumming and culminates in an aching climb through sheets of shimmering guitar chords before erupting in a violent spurt of harsh noise. While at its climax it may be evocative of transcendental string manglers ranging from My Bloody Valentine to Godspeed You Black Emperor, in its more subtle moments it wades through the kind of blackened water that suggests the outer boundaries of ambient metal, or the ghostly remnants of a cassette dub of beatless electronics. Composed for Daisy Karen Thompson’s “Re-Marks on Source Material”, the music shares that dance’s Foucault influenced questioning of the limits imposed on our bodies by technology and labor, reaching for an ecstatic escape from discipline and control. Listeners may want to reach for the same - to do so we suggest they play this recording very very loud.
Thanks.......!....Terrific! (I took their suggestion)
Oct. 30th, 2015
Gabriel Saloman - Movement Building Vol.2
ps- Wow, I'll keep an eye out for Vol.3 on the N&N. Thanks. Again!
Performed live at the Park Avenue Armory Veterans Room as part of Jason Moran's Artists Studio series.
May 20, 2016.
Gabriel Saloman - Live in Geneva (28 November, 2009)
GABRIEL SALOMAN & COMMON EIDER KING EIDER
Throats of Ash European Tour
Common Eider King Eider - Extinction
Composed by La Monte Young
Arranged and performed by Gabriel Saloman
I've been realizing again this past week the degree to which the serendipitous pathways along which I have gradually extended my knowledge of jazz have left gaps when it comes to knowing about female jazz musicians, whether long-successful (Terri Lyne Carrington) or new (Melissa Aldana) - these names are new to me in the past few days and I also rediscovered Roberta Piket on my SFL. Good stuff.
Circle of Light - The Photography Of Pamela Bone
Thanks @rostasi . . . (0,98 € at €music)
- http://delia-derbyshire.net/sites/660.htm
https://ctatsu.bandcamp.com/album/self-titled
http://www.victoiremusic.com/
Continuo's Documents
i can't seem to figure out how to post pictures from mobile anymore.
Maybe it's because I had this first (by a long time) but I still love this compilation more than Entertainment. Sure Entertainment has the best songs, but there are a lot of great ones from later too, like Cheeseburger, To Hell With Poverty, We Live as We Dream, Alone, etc.
North Atlantic Explorers - My Father was a Sailor
Featuring Delia Derbyshire
Discogs
Worth the 15 or so years wait