summer gate. sun made of gave. takes its title from a poem by Cole Swensen. The thread running through this compilation is the idea of the gift. Barthes writes:
"Succeeding the Author, the writer no longer contains within himself passions, humors, sentiments, impressions, but that enormous dictionary, from which he derives a writing which can know no end or halt: life can only imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, a lost, infinitely remote imitation." [death of the author]
We're interested in this tissue as a sort of living body - cells reproducing and being re-inserted as artistic production articulates itself and moves culture forward through a messy and wonderful strange loop. We hope this collection won't be the end of a process, but a step along the way.
Today, we've uploaded the online and free version of this compilation, featuring a web exclusive track by Bryan Teoh. Thanks to archive.org, you can download the comp in three formats: lossless FLAC, forward thinking OGG, and ubiquitous MP3.
In a few weeks, we'll be offering the CDR edition of the compilation. This edition will feature beautiful packaging and a lovely poster by Justine Reimnitz, an album-only drone track by Bryan Teoh, and a nice LuvSound button. We won't be selling it, however. If you would like a copy, you have to send us evidence of a contribution you have recently made to your local community - artistic or otherwise. Write a book and droplift it into your library collection. Host a free noise potluck behind city hall. Publish a zine. Sew a shirt and hand it to a stranger. Above all: produce. Production is the lever of resistance and progress. If you send us a photo of your event, a copy of your zine, or a story about what you've done, we'll mail you a copy of the compilation as soon as it is released.
In the meantime, please download, have a listen, burn, share, and discuss.
The entire disc has been lovingly mastered by John McCaig (Effacer) at Panic Studios in Washington, and the cover photo was taken by Myer Nore and edited by us.
disc one: summer gate
one opn
coral reefs
4:07
[FLAC &
OGG]
two rain cloud
cloud suprise
6:31
[FLAC &
OGG]
three mattin
injections of abjection
1:49
[FLAC &
OGG]
four effacer
murmur
4:34
[FLAC &
OGG]
five tsukimono
sing it to me, sing it to me like you sang it to me
8:59
[FLAC &
OGG]
six sleeps in oysters
sea flowers blossom
4:33
[FLAC &
OGG]
seven cremaster
spring live
26:34
[FLAC &
OGG]
[download the entire disc as mp3, ogg, or flac]
[review this release]
disc two: sun made of gave
one gregg kowalsky
tendrils guitar pickup (extended mix)
4:21
[FLAC &
OGG]
two bryan teoh
fifths
11:56
[FLAC &
OGG]
three Jeph Jerman
Contact Mic recording of woven cane sunshade
11:43
[FLAC &
OGG]
four Muninn
Smok
5:37
[FLAC &
OGG]
five Nomad Palace
Morning before, Night after (zero gravity mix)
3:30
[FLAC &
OGG]
six Implex Grace
Springtime Phasewaves
5:36
[FLAC &
OGG]
seven AllThatFall
Making Places
3:20
[FLAC &
OGG]
eight Inlets
Pictures of Trees
4:56
[FLAC &
OGG]
nine Ingrid
Cello
8:11
[FLAC &
OGG]
ten Trio Mopmu
Prodava Se Konche (RF Remix)
4:01
[FLAC &
OGG]
[download the entire disc as mp3, ogg, or flac]
[review this release]
biographies
Even the archaic artist, who had an uncanny virtuosity, found it necessary to
create a group of intermediaries, monsters, hybrids, gods, and demigods. The
difference is that, since the archaic artist was living in a more practical
society than ours, the urgency for transcendent experience was understood,
and given an official status. As a consequence, the human figure and other
elements from the familiar world could be combined with, or participate as
a whole in the enactment of the excesses which characterize this improbable
hierarchy. With OPN the disguise must be complete. The familiar identity
of things has to be pulverized in order to destroy the finite associations
with which our society increasingly enshrouds every aspect of our environment.
opn is a sound artist based in the uk.
[OPN on myspace | robot opera]
If, however, through the lack of better judgment the flight was continued toward
the approaching Rain Cloud, a few altostratus clouds and a dark layer of
nimbostratus lying low on the horizon, with perhaps cumulonimbus in the
background would be noted. If flight were continued, entrapment in a line
of squalls and cumulonimbus clouds could occur. It may be disastrous to fly
beneath these clouds; impossible, in a small plane, to fly above them.
Rain Cloud is the duo project of D.Dixon (talking makes no sense) + A.Cheer, based in the UK.
Mattin-directed types, for instance, in the urban American environment may be
forced into resentment of rebellion. They may be unable to adapt because they
lack the proper receiving equipment for the radar signals that increasingly
direct attitude and behavior in the phase of insipient population decline.
They may refuse to adapt because of moral disapproval of what the signals
convey. Or they may be discouraged by the fact hat the signals, though
inviting enough, do not seem meant for them. Mattin is a sound and video
artist from the basque country.
[mattin]
Effacer stood up. He leaned his back
against the weight of his pack where it rested upright on the stump and got
his arms through the shoulder straps. He stood with the pack on his back on
the brow of the hill looking out across the country, toward the distant
river and then struck down the hillside away from the road. Underfoot
the ground was good walking. Two hundred yards down the hillside the fire
line stopped. Then it was sweet fern, growing ankle high, to walk through,
and clumps of jack pines; a long undulating country with frequent rises and
descents, sandy underfoot and the country alive again.
Effacer is john mccaig from seattle, washington.
[effacer]
There is a general rule by means of which Tsukimono can obtain the symphony
from the score, and which makes it possible to derive the symphony from the
groove on the gramophone record, and, using the first rule, to derive the
score again. This is what constitutes the inner similarity between these
things which seem to be constructed in such entirely different ways. And
that rule is the law of projection which projects the symphony into the
language of musical notation. It is the rule for translating this language
into the language of gramophone records.
tsukimono is Johan Gustavsson from malmö sweden.
[your son-shine | scraps of tape | conduo orchestra]
The initial goal, which motivated their extensive timbral and harmonic
research, was the desire to develop the capacity to control the finest
possible degrees of change. Having achieved this, however,
Sleeps in Oysters
began to feel that the music had perhaps become too directional and
predictable; they then had to find a way to re-introduce surprise,
contrast and rupture. Contrary to the widely held view, they were
never truly absent; even in the earliest pieces. In Sea Flowers Blossom,
which is considered a typical piece from this period, there is continuity,
but there are also ruptures and many other types of transition: passing of
thresholds, reversing of the direction of motion, triggering of 'catastrophic'
changes, abbreviated processes where only some of the steps in a process are
present, etc.
sleeps in oysters is Lisa Busby and John Harries from Glasgow and Reading.
[Sleeps in Oysters on myspace ]
cremaster was at first only a profounder
understanding of the interconnections in social life, an attempt to solve the
contradictions implicit in the present social order and to give new content to
man's relations with his social environment. His influence was, therefore,
for a time confined to a little circle of intellectuals, who for the most
part came from the privileged classes. Inspired with a profound and noble
sympathy for the material and intellectual needs of the great masses they
sought a way out of the labyrinth of social antagonisms in order to open
to mankind new outlooks for its future development. For them Cremaster was
a cultural question; therefore, they made their appeal directly and chiefly
to the reason and ethical sense of their contemporaries, hoping to find them
receptive to the new insights.
cremaster is Ferran Fages and Alfredo Costa Monteiro from Barcelona, Spain.
[cremaster ]
The work of Gregg Kowalsky ultimately manifests very little external
relationship with the literature that was once his model. Because he
esteems himself; because, through his self-esteem, he evolves away from
his preliminary conditions, from his models, which perhaps at the beginning
did serve as props, crutches he used in his first efforts to walk. Because
ultimately he will not write what is artistically acceptable (Kunstgemäss),
but rather what is acceptable to him, the artist (Künstlergemäss).
Gregg Kowalsky is a sound artist based in Oakland, California.
Through July they had one fine day after another; it was very hot; and the heat,
searing Bryan Teoh's heart, filled him with languor; he could not work; his mind
was eager with a thousand thoughts. Often he spent the mornings by the side of
the canal in the shade of the poplars, reading a few lines and then dreaming
for half an hour. Sometimes he hired a rickety bicycle and rode along the dusty
road that led to the forest, and then lay down in a clearing. His head was
full of romantic fancies. The ladies of Watteau, gay and insouciant, seemed
to wander with their cavaliers among the great trees, whispering to one
another careless, charming things, and yet somehow oppressed by a nameless fear.
Bryan Teoh is a guitarist and sound artist currently based in katy, texas.
The difficulty of communicating across an air-liquid interface can be appreciated
by trying to talk with Jeph Jerman, who is under water. Most of the sound energy
generated in the air is reflected back from the water's surface, so it is
difficult to talk loud enough to move the water at the required frequency
and displacement. This situation is called an acoustic impedance mismatch.
Jeph Jerman is a sound artist based in cottonwood, arizona.
Muninn, of course, emphasized the theoretical importance of the relationship
of signs to each other. He also noted that 'normally we do not express
ourselves by using single linguistic signs, organized in complexes
which themselves are signs.' However, in practice he treated the
individual word as the primary example of the sign. Thinking and
communication depend on discourse rather than isolated signs.
Muninn is George Locke from Boston, Massachusetts.
[muninn]
If darkness is only two hours or less away, and you know camp is a
long way off, stay where you are. Before you start out, whether it
is immediately after the waiting period, or the next morning, write
a note to Nomad Palace if possible and fasten it with pegs to your
marked tree. Give your name, which way you went, and the date.
Nomad Palace is Nate Zabriskie from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Under circumstances where Implex Grace decides that he should break contact
and escape for his own safety, he should quickly submerge the victim. If the
victim is still holding onto the rescuer's wrist, the rescuer can reach across
with his free hand, grab his own fist, and pull quickly and firmly upward and
towards himself. Stroking backward quickly with both arms and legs should
enable the rescuer to escape out of the victim's reach. The rescuer can
then decide what techniques can most effectively be used to assist the victim.
Implex Grace is Michael Goodman from Chicago, Illinois.
[implex grace | implex grace on myspace]
Thus the scene in the music room, with the two Galls, ceased very soon to
signify for AllThatFall a piano tuned, an obscure family and professional
relation, an exchange of judgments more or less intelligible, and so on,
if indeed it had ever signified such things, and became a mere example of
light commenting bodies, and stillness motion, and silence sound, and
comment comment.
AllThatFall is Kevin Gipson from New Orleans, Louisiana.
After tea, however, a shape began to emerge which brought back our
spirits. Three chains twisted about each other in a way that gave
rise to a crystallographic repeat every 28 Angstroms along the helical
axis. This was a feature demanded by Inlets' pictures, so Francis was
visibly reassured as he stepped back from the lab bench and surveyed
the afternoon's effort.
inlets is Sebastian Krueger from Brooklyn, New York.
Quickly, as if she were called by something over there, Ingrid turned
to her canvas. There it was - her picture. Yes, with all its greens and
blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would
be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that
matter? She asked herself, taking up her brush again. Ingrid looked at the
steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a
sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line
there, in the center. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought,
laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.
Ingrid is Laurel Ogren and Erik Schoster from St Paul, Minnesota and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Nevertheless, catastrophe ensued. Ryan Francesconi emerged from sleep one
day as if from a viscous desert, looked at the vain light of afternoon,
which at first he confused with that of dawn, and understood that he had
not really dreamt. All that night and all day, the intolerable lucidity
of insomnia weighed upon him. He tried to explore the jungle, to exhaust
himself; amidst the hemlocks, he was scarcely able to manage a few snatches
of sleep, fleetingly mottled with rudimentary visions which were useless.
RF is Ryan Francesconi from Berkeley, California.