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LP
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BLUME 024LP
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Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free-standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding, the label is now offering a brand new, ambitious work by the American composer Ben Vida, entitled Vocal Trio, conceived, performed, and recorded in Bremen, Germany, during the Spring of 2022. A truly stunning work of compositional conceptualism, combining the ideas of systems based synthesis with real-time vocal collaboration -- issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 200 copies mastered by Stephan Mathieu, featuring specially commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey and a leporello insert offering the piece visual score -- it's a landmark in contemporary experimental practice and arguably the most forward-thinking and exciting piece by one of the most exciting American artists working today. Vocal Trio is a work that encounters Vida composing for the human voice with the ideas that allow for synthesis -- transferring the underlying concepts and structures of both subtractive and additive synthesis to the acoustic realm -- without using a synthesizer. During the Spring of 2022 Vida was in Bremen, Germany, collaborating on a dance piece with the choreographer Fay Driscoll, when the production fell into delays. Finding himself with time on his hands, a space at his disposal, and the company of two dancers -- Amy Gernux and Lotte Rudhart -- he set out to utilize the larynx as audio paths (multi-harmonic or harmonically pure) while conceptualizing each person's mouth as a filter to sculpt the timbre and resonance of a given tone. Considering how typographical scores might be developed into a non-linguistic social framework, Vida drafted a single page of text -- what became the score for Vocal Trio -- accompanied by a set of harmonic suggestion and loose parameters, seeking a core meaning from each word's phonic make-up by each of the three singers (Vida, Gernux and Rudhart) singing as slowly as possible. At the core of the pulsing vocal drones -- intoxicating, harmonically rich long-tones -- that make up the duration abstraction of Vocal Trio, is Vida's regard for music as a social space. It is an experiment that seeks liberation through the act of collective music making, by challenging the terms through which the act of composing is perceived and then relinquishing control.
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LP
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FAG 001LP
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"Future Audio Graphics is pleased to announce Extraction, the latest from composer and sound artist Ben Vida (PAN, Amish, Shelter Press, et al). Extraction (FAG 001) is a collaboration between Vida, visual artist Meredyth Sparks, and curator/writer Anthony Elms and is the first in a series of collaborative releases for Future Audio Graphics. Continuing Vida's explorations of digital and analog processing systems, Extraction gives particular focus to aural phenomena -- engaging electronic, non-representational sounds that appear to cut, move and oscillate on both vertical and horizontal planes. Building on his past work, Vida's two, side-long contributions to Extraction include, among other things, a series of what appears to be infinitely long, sweeping tones staggered between short, halting breaks. The audio parallels an artistic practice and method that visual artist Meredyth Sparks has developed over the last five years in her own studio and practice. Full-color gatefold LP, limited to 350 copies. Mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin."
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