Saturday, August 20, 2022

vertonen: -30- box (7", 2 x 7" square picture disc lathes, 5 x CDR, booklet)

when you throw your own party, you get to bake the cake. I've ben entertaining myself with vertonen for now on 30 years. 

the 7” is a nod to the first 7” I released in 1994: like that 7”, this has a track on one side and 15 lock grooves on the flip. The cover design is also a nod to that first 7”.  

the two square lathe picture discs are recent work I feel are served well by the mono format of lathes.

the five CDRs, “then,” “live” and “now I-III,” pretty much are that: disc “then” contains a dozen tracks from early cassette releases from 1989 (pre-vertonen) through 1997. The “live” disc is (surprise) live tracks (some complete sets, some extracts) spanning 1991 through 2010. and finally, the “now” discs are new material composed primarily over the last two years.

all of these items come in a stamped reel-to-reel box with a booklet that goes into a bit more depth about the contents.

edition of 33 signed and numbered copies. $65 ppd in the US.

there is also an edition of 67 signed and numbered copies of the 7" only (slightly different cover) available: those are $10 ea in the US.

overseas, get in touch so I can calculate shipping.








Tuesday, August 16, 2022

SICKNESS "Wax Casting" review

 

Huge thanks to Vital Weekly for the lovely review of the SICKNESS lathe. The combination of the writer's personal memory of a SICKNESS show and an appreciation for Chris’s work really shone through.   

The full review can be read here, but perhaps my favorite excerpt, a recollection of a SICKNESS show from 2009 is as follows:

 

It was all a bit blurry to me, partially due to the fact that is was November and outside and cold. I remember cold. But I also remember the impact that SICKNESS had on me that evening. So much power, so chaotic and yet so much control in the consistency of his sounds. Chris Goudreau was a name I dove into after that weekend had the music of him I discovered since then hasn't let me down so far. Not once.

 
(And while the lathe is indeed sold out, don’t let that stop you from exploring Chris’s back catalogue [and other endeavors!] to either fill in gaps or get on the path).

 

Sunday, August 7, 2022

recently released (and reviewed!): Adam Sonderberg, Page F (C-100)

 

 I am extremely pleased to make available ballastnvp048, Adam Sonderberg: Page F (c-100 cs)

 





 


The two sides of page f, “installation” and “composite,” use personal archival material to explore therapeutic counseling. 

 

Patient / client confidentiality is the utmost concern for counseling professionals, and the sound screen machines placed outside office doors are a ubiquitous feature in many facilities; they help to ensure privacy to those in-session via a veil of white noise. 

 

I consider side 1, “Installation,” the more voyeuristic of the two pieces, “placing” the listener in an approximated waiting room. Adam’s mix of white noise, encroaching incidental environmental sounds, and voices creates a space where privacy issues loom large: what is the difference between hearing and listening? What is the human desire to piece together a satisfactory narrative when that narrative is concealed? What resolution, satisfaction, or insight does one hope to uncover by linking the elements to produce—accurate or otherwise—a narrative?

 

The “Composite” side explores this question further and manipulates the experience more directly: the legibility of the voices is reduced and brought into greater focus through discreet processing; the chorus of white noise aggressively denies disclosure. This side, for me, creates an environment not unlike Z’EV’s uns project where “information,” almost reluctantly, presents itself: the listener must willingly bring engagement to the experience and, at the same time, be comfortable fending for themselves.

 

In his review in Vital Weekly, Frans de Waard noted, The level of conceptology is quite high here, and as such, I retreat to another level. Regardless of the concept, do I like what I hear? Yes, I do, even at the full 100 minutes. Or rather, maybe, because it is so long. Both sides have a tremendous amount of white noise, and somewhere, far away, there are voices. It is as if the microphone is three doors down from the waiting room, and someone made a lot of trouble picking up these sounds, pumped the sound a lot but never bothered to remove unwanted white noise. This is fascinating stuff, so I imagine some people will find this highly annoying. Also, I am unsure if one should play this at a low volume or crank it up high to make the best experience. I kept it on a normal level, did some chores around the house, and found this quite the surreal soundtrack for such tasks.

 

Edition of 21 copies in a white, windowless c100 cassette housed in a hand-typed and stamped outer o-card, an opaque white case, with a hand-typed, signed and numbered j-card, plus two inserts including notes from Joseph Clayton Mills.
$17 ppd in the united states: overseas, please get in touch.