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01. GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID - Failed Celestial Creatures
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02. GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID - The Forest Dictation
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03. GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID - Constellation Of Sand
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04. GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID - Threadbare 1
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05. GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID - Threadbare 2
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06. GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID - Threadbare 3
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07. GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID - Threadbare 4
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ARTIST
GRUBBS & TAKU UNAMI, DAVID
TITLE
Failed Celestial Creatures
FORMAT
LP
LABEL
EMPTY EDITIONS
CATALOG #
EE 003LP
EE 003LP
GENRE
EXPERIMENTAL
RELEASE DATE
6/1/2018
Empty Editions present
Failed Celestial Creatures
, an unexpected collaboration between composer-guitarist
David Grubbs
(
Gastr Del Sol
,
The Red Krayola
) and Tokyo-based musician
Taku Unami
. Primarily recorded in Kyoto, the album takes inspiration from the duo's shared musical and literary influences, emerging just as much from their improvisatory explorations as from an eclectic reading list exchanged prior to the recording sessions. The album's narrative inclinations are rooted in both artists' previous experiments with the complex reciprocity between sound and text, including Grubbs' work with the poet
Susan Howe
and Unami's collaborations with writers such as
Eugene Thacker
and
Evan Calder Williams
.
Failed Celestial Creatures
draws in particular upon a group of short stories by the short-lived Japanese author
Atsushi Nakajima
(1909-42) -- perhaps best known for inflecting Classical Chinese folktales with a modernist vein of absurdist and existential foreboding -- as the imaginary backdrop for its set of guitar-based instrumental explorations. In Nakajima's
The Moon Over The Mountain
, a mad-poet metamorphosed into a hybrid-tiger recites poetry with an obscure defect, while
The Rebirth of Wujing
sees the titular river monster self-identifying as a "failed celestial being" [堕天使]. The cryptic collapse read in both of these episodes resonates with Unami's research into the etymology of the chinese character "堕," meaning "to fail" in modern usage, but historically understood as referencing "sacred meat from the altar fallen on the ground." Such a primordial scene evokes the violation of the sacred as a tacit aspect of ritual. This failure of ritual, always a condition (and perhaps even a technique) for musicians of Grubbs and Unami's ilk, can be broadly understood as the primary point of departure for
Failed Celestial Creatures
. Situated within this affective terrain, the album's title-track consists of a side-long progression of dirge-like riffs enveloped by clouds of vaporous electronics -- eventually erupting into unruly squalls of feedback as Unami joins Grubbs on electric guitar. The B-side features a cluster of luminous guitar duets which are beguiling in their seeming effortlessness and simplicity. Threadbare and fallen, Grubbs and Unami invoke the failed ritual, the spilling at the altar, always suggested at the precipice of sonic emergence. Recorded by Taku Unami at Soto, Kyoto, August 7th and 9th, 2017; Mastered by
Rashad Becker
at Dubplates & Mastering. 180 gram vinyl; Edition of 500.
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