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BLACKEST 042LP
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Faith Coloccia and Alex Barnett return to Blackest Ever Black with their second duo album, Weld; working with synthesizers, effected vocals, raw electrical noise, field recordings, EVP techniques, tape manipulation, and drum machines to create a music at once lucid and mystic. Its songs embody various experiential philosophies and objectives: searching for the sacred in the forgotten and supposedly useless; exploring the meaning of "natural"; listening for the pulse of the ancient; using technology both to materialize memory and to dream a folklore for a future age. Coloccia and Barnett's ambition is apparent early on in the stately, medievalist keyboard/choral poetics of "Truth Teller," moving through the agitated wormhole techno of "Dreamsnake," to the white light-emitting, near-symphonic plainchant of "Healer." The zero-hour synth pulsations of "Blight" are first interrupted, then engulfed, by an extra-terrestrial broadcast of piercing bell and glass-tones; "AM Horizon" is pitched bewitchingly between Prophet-5 pulp futurism and earthbound, atavistic dread; the baroque harmonic sequence of "Agate Cross" disintegrates at its very climax, cooling and dissipating into a deep star-field of pure tone. "Ash Grove" and "Rose Eye" are exhilarating exercises in contemporary musique concrète; complex timbral constructs in which Coloccia's disembodied glossolalia, swooping strings, and other nameless sonic spectra conspire to evoke extra-dimensional space and the highest spiritual drama. Weld speaks its own distinctive dream-language, but it comes highly recommend to anyone enamored of the brittle sci-fi synth-scapes in Caroline K's Now Wait for Last Year, the amorphous electronics of Beatriz Ferreyra's work, Conrad Schnitzler's more gothic moments, and even the gravest metaphysical reckonings of a Stockhausen or a Rózmann.
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BLACKEST 024LP
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Retrieval is the debut collaborative album from Faith Coloccia and Alex Barnett. Artist and composer Coloccia was a founding member of Everlovely Lightningheart, and is perhaps best known as one-half of Mamiffer. She has contributed to recordings by House Of Low Culture, Boris, and William Fowler Collins, among others, and collaborations with Circle and Daniel Menche are forthcoming. Alex Barnett played in Oakeater, but since 2009 has been active primarily as a solo artist, with releases on Catholic Tapes, DRAFT, Nihilist, and others. Following an initial exchange of ideas, the bulk of Retrieval was recorded over three intensive days at Otic Sound in Vancouver, with Coloccia contributing treated vocals, tape-manipulated acoustic recordings and AM radio sounds, and Barnett adding an array of synth instruments to create further loops, drum sounds and other rhythmic elements. A grave, deeply introspective work, pastoral in essence but cosmic in scope. Opening with the stately, medievalist sequences of "Harbor," Retrieval's narrative takes in subdued techno abstraction ("Hallway"), chrondritic psychedelia ("So, How Much Do You Know About Me?"), saw-mill gear-grind ("Repeating Pit") and eldritch noise invocations ("Retrieval," "Bird's Eye"). Throughout, it invigorates without consoling. Mixed by Randall Dunn at AVAST!. Mastered by James Plotkin. Vinyl cut by Noel Summerville and pressed at Optimal. Housed in a full picture sleeve with an 8.5" x 11" photocopy insert. Recorded at Otic Sound by Joshua Stevenson in Vancouver, Canada, using: EMS Synthi AKS, A, and 100; Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 and Pro One; Roland Vocoder Plus VP 330; Korg Polyphonic synthesizer PS3300; EDP Wasp; Korg Lambda; Moog Opus 3 and Prodigy; Farfisa Synthorchestra; tape cassette recorder; voice.
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