Usego • Ambient Church • Creel Pone @ Montez
Precisely 19 years in the making, I’m overjoyed to finally launch a collaborative release with one of my heroes in Music & Sound/Art, Voice Crack member Norbert Möslang, centered around a 2005 improvised duo concert in Switzerland.
After submitting a pair of Hrvatski “Tributes” (precisely 5 seconds of breakcore followed by an overdubbed synth, guitar, & sampler improvisation, then a “Cracked” synthesizer miniature; see below) to the Voice Crack Remixes set on Ambush (both of these are in the “Remixplosion” package) a prescient Swiss promoter had the idea to book Norbert & I at the now-defunct Usego bar in Möslang’s hometown of St. Gallen. After a hilarious mix-up (I was dropped off at Andy Guhl’s office by mistake) I arrived at the venue & met Norbert for the first time, and while casually chatting & soundchecking we decided to play an “Encore” set together, almost as an afterthought. The melding of Analogue & Digital timbres worked beautifully, and luckily we had the forethought to record everything.
As soon as I returned to Boston following the trip, I had the idea to work on a release of the material (I had wound down Reckankreuzungsklankewerkzeuge, but was making tiny, private editions on a new label, entschuldigen) and collectively we decided to work on “Versions” of the improvised set in a more “Offline” manner. Norbert turned in a gorgeous trilogy of reworkings incorporating the litany of tabletop electronic apparatus through which he ran the original concert audio, and I spectrally separated the same through a network of 10 “Spectral Gates” which were then treated separately, then time-aligned & mixed back into a stereo image.
These 7 pieces make up the “Usego” package & are available to purchase and/or stream via the usual suspects:
In other news, I’ve scheduled a long-overdue appearance at the newly revamped Ambient Church series, which is happening a few blocks away at the Church of St. Luke & St. Matthew here in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn on April 19th. I’ll be revisiting the “Playthroughs” computer-music frameworks for the first time since the piece/record’s 20th Anniversary concert at e-flux. Discounted “Early Bird” tickets are available now, with opening acts TBC shortly. Very excited for this home-neighborhood reappraisal!
Finally, after a year-long beauty res(e)t, the Creel Pone Show will return to the datawaves on March 26th from 7PM-9PM for a 7th installment. Tune in via the Montez Press Radio site to hear Jacob Gorchov & I muse around recent developments in the endless global scouring for hitherto unheralded Early Electronic & Experimental Music of note.
Montez had a great exposé in the New York Times last week; Creel Pone has been on a tear for the past few months & is about to crest the 300th “Dot” (this in addition to the several sub-series; total count is closer to 350 at this stage) in advance of the series’ 19th Anniversary in May. I highly recommend subscribing to the Alpha State NYC newsletter (signup is at the bottom of the page) to be kept abreast of developments there.
