ballastnvp068 and 069 now available!

 

excited to share two new releases. 

first up, ballast nvp068—dead edits: “Everybody, this has been one of the greatest tours of our life. We really, first, I’d like to thank the band. I’d like to thank our road crew. And I’d like to thank our lighting people. Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest, because  not only is it the last show of the tour, but it's the last show that we'll ever do. Thank you.” (7” square picture disc lathe)

 

yes, that’s the title. 

 

 as with most dead edits releases, this started with a conversation—broadly about david bowie, but specifically about how utterly impeccable his “farewell speech,” as it’s come to be known, was delivered during what would be the last performance of the spiders from mars.

side one employs reduplicative strategies to degrade and evolve the “farewell speech” with various playback and recording methods to produced distorted and time adjusted “iterations” of the speech.

on the other side—because nothing can follow the farewell speech besides “rock and roll suicide,” dead edits approaches the song—as captured from the Odeon performance—with our own distinct treatment.

edition of 28 numbered copies, $22

ballast nvp069—vertonen: irreversibility (2 x CDR).

responses to death, of course, are situationally variable. irreversibility is, for me, one such response. disc one, “irreversible,” leans more towards recent work with layered, raw, or processed “small” sounds mixed with field recordings and various electronic disturbances. disc two, “death tick,” is a linked trilogy of pieces built primarily from tonal sine wave manipulation and was heavily inspired by the 1977 electronic music album Pythagoron.

edition of 22 signed and numbered copies, $12.

 

if you’re ordering from overseas, please get in touch so we can calculate shipping.

thanks as always for your support and interest!

new Eric Lunde (in collab/ with Zack Hansen, Precarian Cuts): emptiness of emptiness 3 x 7" lathe

New goodies from Mr. Lunde:

emptiness of emptiness (in collaboration with Zack Hansen, Precarian Cuts)

triple 7” lathe set: handmade/handprinted edition with a collection of prints

 

besides being an incredible art object, this release encapsulates so much of eric’s artistic aesthetic: reduplication, accidents, and the absurd—and an appreciation and expansion of all three.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

handy guide to what’s inside:

sleeve zero
printed empty matter

sleeve one
disc one: side 0, empty
disc one, side 1: track 0 pure lathe cut—only the sound of the lathe track itself

sleeve two
disc two, side 2: track 1: audio recording of lathe cut being played; track 2, recording of the recording of the lathe cut
disc two, side 3, track 3: recording of the recording of the recording of the lathe cut; track 4, recording of the recording of the recording of the recording of the lathe cut

sleeve three
disc three, side 4, track 5: sound of track 4 being cut into the disc
disc three, side 5: empty 

 

$60 ppd us: rest of world, get in touch for shipping!

kanshiketsu! built! released by ballast! much limited edition....

Also, check out eric’s various web presences AND zack’s website too: he’s cut every ballast lathe thus far and is a delightful person...

 

https://endythekid.blogspot.com/      

 https://kanshiketsu.bandcamp.com/

https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/lunde

http://www.precariancuts.com/

new ballast co-release: eric lunde - eat the copy! redux (3 x CDR, 2 x books, linocut print)

Eric Lunde is one brilliant writer and artist, and I am thrilled to help distribute this item into the world.

eric lunde: eat the copy redux (3 x CDR, 2 x books, linocut print)

this release is readings and provocations from and about the book somnium 3: eat the copy!  by eric lunde.

 

the book somnium 3: eat the copy! is an account of eric lunde’s experience through high-grade covid infection that landed him in the ICU for the first week of December 2023. In Eric's own words:

 

the third installment in the somnium™ series, series 3 follows the somnium template of 137 episodes of 137 words (think physics not psychics....the significance being that in physics 137 was once believed to be the exact value of the fine-structure constant, a number which, according to leon lederman, "shows up naked all over the place.”) the series follows the authors adventures in covid-induced hallucinations until arriving at the obvious conclusion: we are the virus! we are all copies of the virus! eat the copy!

 

it is a poetic rendering of the experience, hallucinatory and ultimately enlightening for mr. lunde.

 

this release includes somnium 3 (208 pages); eat the copy! redux (124 pages, textual and textual/visual rendering of elements of somnium 3) a print, and three CDRs:

 

disc 1: 137 degradations by eric lunde

disc 2: “137 at 137 inches” by blake edwards: four layered microcassette to microcassette recordings of layered readings of somnium 3 redlined and then mixed

disc 3: various expositions by j soliday, blake edwards, karl paloucek, and jeph jerman, framing selected readings from somnium 3.

just look at this party:

the release is in a limited edition and is $30 ppd in the US: overseas, please get in touch about shipping!

thanks,

Blake

two new ballast releases (nvp63 and nvp65), and...bandcamp!

thrilled to announce two new ballast releases.

ballastnvp063: vertonen: she would have made such a lovely bride 
(5” x 7” postcard lathe, 2 x CDR)

there were four elements of the Eras Tour I attended june 2, 2023 that I wanted to capture with audio, but an unexpected fifth one—the crowd response at the end of “Champagne Problems”—is what set this release in motion.

as far as I knew, this song didn’t particularly carry the gravitas of other Swift songs, so after about 15 or so seconds of applause I decided to start recording the audience (and Swift’s) response. 

About a month or so later, I learned that “Champagne Problems” had become a song in the setlist for which audiences really went off the deep end with their applause. Swift, a consummate performer and no stranger to working a crowd, responded accordingly as the tour went on. 

 

The audio on the picture disc postcard is the “Champagne Problems” audience response I recorded in chicago.

disc 1, american crowd work, is a collection of “Champagne Problems” audience / Swift interactions I pulled from youtube: many have been taken down (due to, understandably, copyright violation of the recording of the song). as luck would have it, I was able to grab the first and last night of the 2023 US portion of the tour.

disc 2, the idea you had of me—who was she?  is the most traditionally “musical” component of the release: a continuation of my interest in piano—specifically the work of Conlon Nancarrow and Steven Reich. disc 2 is multiple phasing layers of two two-second Swift piano loops (from “Champagne Problems” and “Last Great American Dynasty”) anchored by drones built off the bass line from “All Too Well.”

Edition of 30 copies, $18 ppd in the US.

 

ballastnvp065 modelbau: groef (CDR)

after Frans de Waard reviewed a copy of my 30th anniversary release, he mentioned he had started making tape loops from some of the lock grooves—was I interest in a collaboration? I agreed, but when he sent me the files, the way he’d transformed / modified / permutated the source material—well beyond recognition—was to such a level that not only did I feel any further efforts by me would have been gilding the lily but, in fact, not of any concrete value, which puts us at this release as it sits.
(fun fact: groef is dutch for groove.)

edition of 47 numbered copies, $10 ppd in the US.

 

overseas, please get in touch so I can calculate shipping.

 

as a side note, I've finally joined 2008 and vertonen is now on bandcamp. 

no ballast releases, of course, but old CIP titles and (soon) audio exclusivew to that platform.

thanks as always for your interest and time.

blake

 

 

 

...and reviews for tac and jacob deraadt!

 

Thanks to Frans de Waard for his kind words in vital weekly about the tac lathe / CDR release and the Jacob DeRaadt CDR: below are the highlights, and the full review (and rest of the issue) can be read here.

tac 7” lathe and CDR:
“TAC’s music is also something different. The CDR, for instance, is one endless stream of sound, a collage of field recordings, some very closely made and others from far away. Also, there is a lot of object abuse here, tossing about objects (and I have no idea what they are). Because there are no individual pieces, it all becomes an endless stream of sound, in which there is, deliberately, no head and tail and something you get sucked into. The two shorter pieces on the lathe cut are different. Here, TAC works with a more compositional approach of metal rods dragged across a surface, along with some highly obscured on one side and a deep bass drone opening on the other side, gradually moving towards something that works with individual sounds of contact microphone abuse but with that bass drone lingering in the backside. 7″ and CDR are definitely two different sides of TAC.

 

Jacob DeRaadt’s Universal Hotel CDR
“‘Universal Hotel’ is the second release for which he uses his own name and primarily uses field recordings taken from the places he used to live in. […] Each of the seven pieces has a minimalist look at these locations. In each piece, he uses various recordings from that place and lets the various sounds work together to find a dialogue between them, albeit a minimal one. I have no idea if there is some kind of manipulation other than mixing a few sounds, but it all sounds great.”

ballast nvp061 and 064, tac and jacob deraadt, now available!

excited to share these two new releases!

nvp061: tac – vibrations 7” lathe and artifacts CDR

 

if you know tac, you know what joy awaits. if you don’t know tac, think electronics / field recordings collected and assembled in ways designed to  provoke uncertainty of source material and composition process and you’re (kind of) in the right ballpark….maybe. jeph jerman, joe colley, and chop shop are not too far afield. as for the packaging…again, if you know tac’s work, you’re likely already all in…and in for a treat. if you don’t, here’s a hint: almost hermetically sealed. here’s another hint: unequivocally hand made.
bonus: the lathe was cut for visual appeal. 

edition of 24 copies.
$28 ppd in US: overseas, get in touch so I can calculate shipping costs to your location.

 nvp064: Jacob DeRaadt: Universal Hotel CDR

 

 

I first knew Jacob’s work as Sterile Garden, which I enjoyed immensely: “wonderfully uncomfortable” electronics, let’s call it. this release, his second solo work under his own name, is primarily field recordings—as Jacob says, it focuses on “water and natural and urban domestic sounds of places I lived in, with very little or no effects or manipulation.” personally, this feels a bit of a descriptive oversimplification, if only because the choices of sounds to capture (and then present here) reflect Jacob’s ear for creating small “scenarios” with each track. akin to what I noted with tac, Jacob is definitely playing on the same side of the street as jeph jerman, albeit by slightly different rules....

edition of 45 copies.

$11 ppd in US: overseas, get in touch so I can calculate shipping costs to your location.

 

 

thanks as always for your interest and support!

b

two new ballast releases to kick off 2024!

pleased to announce the availability of nvp059, MV Carbon's tears rotate the river 10" lathe, and nvp062, vertonen: flora CDR.

mv carbon’s tears rotate the river is the fourth release in the 10” lathe series.

I first met Carbon some 20+ years ago when she was in the duo Metalux. Since then, Carbon has created a solid body of solo works as a transdisciplinary artist. She also has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad and Charlemagne Palestine.

The recordings on this 10” emphasize her use of magnetic tape, voice and extended vocal techniques, poetry, electronics, and other handmade objects to create sound.

Although Carbon’s approach to audio output is uniquely and indelibly hers, I cannot help but think this release would pique the interest of folks familiar with Algebra Suicide, Inflatable Boy Clams, Nervous Gender, Devo, or Suicide.

 edition of 25 numbered copies. each lathe in the series is $50 ppd in the US.

If you subscribe to the lathe series, the price per lathe drops drastically and guarantees you will get copies of each release in the series, which includes Aaron Dilloway, Evicshen, vertonen, Olivia Block & Adam Sonderberg, and Relay for Death.
See this post for more information.

 

the vertonen CDR, flora, is possibly the closest I have come to intentionally creating “ambient” music—in this case, audio for a botanical conservatory. 

The four main audio facets explored for this release are:

1. warmth (residential and institutional heating vents, institutional floor and baseboard radiators, residential window air conditioning units)
2. moisture (rain, freezing rain, hail, drainspouts)
3. pollinators (birds, wind)
4. sine waves (659.26 hz, 587.33 hz, 440 hz)

Suggested playback is low volume over speakers or over headphones.

 

 

edition of 24 signed and numbered copies: $10 ppd in the US.

folks outside of the US, please get in touch so I can calculate shipping to your location. 

thanks as always for your interest.