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LP
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R 078LP
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Derek Baron is a composer, musician, and artist. Curtain is a diary. Both in musical and non-musical situations, they attribute a filmic quality to their journal-like aural self-documentation. Dreams turn real then dissolve. Single phrases and events arrive and leave, abruptly. Yet, the overall sense of place that Baron creates is understood. Opening Curtain is the eponymous piece. A 21-minute live chamber work for quintet recorded in 2018. A musical assemblage of glued-together fragments and scraps of sheet music from Baron's past. Compositions wrote in the small margins and folds of paper; illustrated in the art booklet included with the LP. The flute, violin, guitar, keyboard, and bass clarinet phrases saunter at a pre-sleep pace, until a subdued, yet ecstatic Mass theme ushers in periodically. Delivering the warmth of life... it is a slow beauty. It brings me such happiness listening to this piece. Its continuity is cut with scissors and pasted about oddly... all soaked in a certain malaise; a resigned grace. The next piece and other side of the LP, "Chancel," is rather different. An audio journal flipped through, dropped on the ground, picked up and opened to another page. A confusing montage of world-ized musical snatches: car radios, church choirs emanating to the streets, moldy organs, domestic piano recordings. Similarly, machine vibrations, bodega conversations, and other environmental observations segue the harmony and disharmony of this listening experience. Here are some of Derek's notes from the booklet: "Co-opting new achievements / Thank you for this incredible demonstration / This theatre of procedures / This consoling play of recognitions / No theatre but "what's that", / Nowhere for the silver ball to roll to. / How are we so in love." 16-page color pamphlet of artwork & text by Baron; edition of 150.
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LP
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PP 023LP
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Penultimate Press is proud to present the debut vinyl release from Derek Baron. From Chicago, Illinois, now residing in Queens, New York, Baron's work muses on the interior and exterior via explorations of history, memory, listening, domestic ambience and the collective understanding of sound as amorphous matter. Crooked Dances presents a series of Erik Satie's piano works as played in a shared flat with various interruptions by those who also contribute to the electricity, water and internet bills. Limited to 300 copies. Crooked Dances comes in a high gloss sleeve designed by Maja Larson with bland photographs supplied by Baron. This is a melancholic, playful journey rooted firmly in the real.
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