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LP
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SOD 137LP
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John Davis is a sound artist and filmmaker based in the Bay Area. Active since the mid-aughts, he has published recordings on labels such as Root Strata and Digitalis, as well as on his own Bimodal Press imprint. Landlines sees a return to the SOD catalog for Davis, following a full-length release in 2013, and may be seen as somewhat of a spiritual successor to that album. In all of Davis' work, there is a specific pastoral sensibility that feels firmly rooted in the forests and coasts of Northern California, moving with the delicate and erratic cadence of dust motes rendered visible in bright sunlight. Opening track "Verichrome" articulates the soundscape wonderfully, stitching together Music Mouse-esque formant synthesis and meditative vocal sampling with an exquisite minimalist suite for prepared piano. Of these recordings, Davis himself writes, "In a general sense the conceit here is nostalgia, a desire to reflect on the importance of connection -- to ourselves and to the world around us. The title is, of course, a euphemism for the telephone, but I am also considering landscape, horizons, and infrastructure, as well as the invisible lines that connect us, the threads that bind us, and the communities that form us."
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CD
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RS 033CD
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2008 release. The Gold Hooped Nature is the debut long player by California dreamer John Davis. Picking up where his 3" CD-R At Home And Afeild left off, this disc is a scenic set of audio drift that easily zigzags dense passages of analog crunch as well as blank vistas of crystalline tones via guitars, found sounds, contact microphones, tape speed oscillations, field recordings and a small battery of effects. John's study as a Filmmaker & Photographer definitely plays some roll here, with any number of landscapes (real or imagined, inner or outer) being brought to mind. Way less head than heart though, with plenty of these tracks dipped in a romantic glaze that betrays any tendency to over conceptualize drone / ambient / whatever music. It's more wide-eyed sunset, lost west coast stargazing than that. And we suspect the endless Midwest horizons of John's youth are in there as well.
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