Browse by Artist: DEUPREE, TAYLOR

Artist:	DEUPREE, TAYLOR
Title:	Shoals
Label:	12K
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	12K 1060CD

"Shoals is perhaps Deupree's most specific album in material concept and sound. In late 2009, he was invited to an artist residency program at the University of York (UK) Music Research Center. He was given the freedom to create a project with the resources of the University and staff at his disposal. The idea was to find a unique idea that he would be unable to realize in his own studio -- and this was when he discovered the University's extensive collection of Javanese and Balinese gamelan instruments. Without hesitation, the groundwork was established for his project at the residency: he would create an album using only these instruments by developing a simple yet powerful audio looping program in the Kyma programming language to capture it all and provide the structure for the finished pieces. After the first day in the studio, Deupree quickly realized that he was less interested in the traditional ways these instruments were played and more fascinated by the sounds of the surfaces of the instruments. And so he began to utilize their edges and undersides and find their flaws, such as broken strings. These instruments, played by scraping, tapping, or with an eBow, became the basis for long and meditative looping beds of sound. In addition, the microphones in the studio would by accident occasionally pick up the sounds of Deupree moving around, brushing the edge of an instrument or setting down mallets. These incidental sounds became as important as the instruments themselves and lend an incredibly physical element to the recordings. Much of Shoals is the sound of microphones in a room as Deupree loops and composes live. The software Deupree developed in Kyma allowed him to very simply layer loops and change pitches of his sounds, often transposing them down 2 or 3 octaves to further emphasize the cracks and fragments. After recording many hours of densely layered loops during the residency, Deupree returned to his 12k studio and finessed the works into the 4 tracks on Shoals, each based around one of the loops. The result is an album that has the slow pace of Stil. mixed with the acoustic imperfections of Weather & Worn and the randomness of Occur. Particles of percussive sounds -- bells, wood, mallets -- are caught by the loop and repeated into a hypnotic underbelly that is coated with a loosely strung Celempung droned by an eBow. The unexpected and almost playful sounds of the instruments' natural surfaces and room sounds are in stark contrast to the smooth tonal melodic elements, yet together they create an immersive space that seems to offer a microcosm of exploration."

Artist:	DEUPREE, TAYLOR
Title:	Northern
Label:	12K
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.50
Catalog #:	12K 2009CD

"12k is re-issuing Northern in an expanded package with re-mixed and re-mastered audio. Not content to merely order a re-pressing of the same masters on hand at the CD manufacturer, Taylor Deupree set out to create what he calls the 'director's cut' of one of the most important CDs in his catalog. The idea was to open the now 2-year-old computer files to remix and remaster the tracks. Of course, over the course of years computers change, formats change, and Deupree found himself faced with missing plug-ins, errored sound files and other oddities that made working with the files difficult. What first seemed like roadblocks turned into a mission to work with what was there and re-do what was not. The result is a Northern that will, on the surface, seem quite similar to the original, however, listeners will hear new sounds, extended endings, shortened endings and most of all, an overall mix that presents these works with a new clarity and spaciousness. Mastering in the analog domain has given the work a new-found sense of delicacy and detail. A heavyweight cardboard wallet with debossed typography on the front cover. Inside are two pockets, one for the CD and one for a 24-page booklet of photography, credits, and lots of white space. All printing, as with the original, is in black and white. The inspiration behind Northern (including its music, title and photography) comes from Deupree's recent relocation from the heart of urban activity in Brooklyn to the tranquility of the forest in upstate New York. Inspired by nature and the winter during which it was created, Northern, like much of his recent work, explores Deupree's interest in stillness and a slowed sense of time. Through quiet textures, subtle movements, faint loops and echoes, it was his goal to create the type of music that comes naturally to him while also highlighting the input from his dramatic new surroundings. In contrast to the brazen repetition found on Stil., Northern's more ephemeral approach to Deupree's theme comes from looking at the stillness found outside of his studio windows: large, looming boulders, the softness of snow, and the hushed whisper of wind and fallen leaves; it is a world of countless tiny movements -- so active that an implied stillness results from the din it creates."

Artist:	DEUPREE, TAYLOR
Title:	Shoals (Edition)
Label:	12K
Format:	7"
Price:	$10.00
Catalog #:	12K 2017EP

"Shoals (Edition) is a companion release to Taylor Deupree's 2010 full-length CD Shoals. This limited edition 7" record has a shortened version of 'A Fading Found' (from the album) on side A and a B-side called 'Sere.' While the 7" format only allows for brief works -- and in this case extracted from much longer compositions -- Edition creates intimate and physical vignettes into these highly acoustic and tactile recordings. Shoals (Edition) is packaged in 12k's 7" style with a heavy chipboard sleeve." Limited, numbered edition of 300 copies. On clear vinyl.

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