|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CD
|
|
DLC 006CD
|
In Last Blues, De la Catessen presents a mysterious folio of sonic snapshots, as much recaptured as composed, by Jon Dale's project, Moth, in Adelaide in the late '90s and early '00s. Listeners are invited to tune in to these liminal frequencies, to observe and inhabit them, and relish the glowing sensual overdrive of their manifestation. From the ready means and at-handedness of guitar, amp, and tape, a congruous but diverse selection of unnamed tracks emerge -- musical moments borrowed from oblivion with the as yet unfulfilled good intention of returning them. Their sounds evoke abstract polaroids of winter seascapes flecked with spare, brittle detail, or the scaly-winged flutterings of elusive nocturnal insects. Here, a homely hum like a vacuum cleaner on sunny childhood's weekend morning; there, suburban power lines buzzing gently in the mist. The last track of Last Blues is like a reverent vision of lava-flow for harmonium, the slow-motion eruption of a single chord, which echoes in the mind for hours. Last Blues comes from somewhere that doesn't exist anymore, and shows listeners something that may never have happened there.
"Jon Dale collapses old dichotomies (such as organic vs. inorganic and heavy vs. light) into a pure horizon of tone with only guitar and a little harmonium. Sonically, it makes me think of a middle point between if Organum snuck into the studio to remix Glenn Branca, and what I imagine the electric synapses firing off in Raymond Roussel's brain would've sounded like if committed to wax cylinder. Which is to say, it sounds rad." --Ben Chasny, Six Organs Of Admittance
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
DLC 016CD
|
"It's music where nothing happened. It's the kind of music somebody might write in Adelaide, Australia. Nothing happened." --Morton Feldman
Theatre is De la Catessen's second venture into the archive of Jon Dale. Originally released in a tiny CD-r edition of 50 copies on Tristes Tropiques in 2019, Theatre now reappears in an edition of 150 glass-mastered CDs. Theatre sees Jon Dale eschewing the hearthwarm drones of his previous album on de la Catessen, Last Blues, and dwelling upon an elusive aural concept: a limbo. Theatre hums with an occupied silence, heightened by scattered expectant sounds: a door opens or closes; muffled voices murmur nearby. As almost nothing continues to happen, the listener occupying the silence seems to hover at the edge of (non)existence. It's tempting to classify Theatre as a purely conceptual listening experience, or to compare it to listening to someone who is in the quiet act of listening to something else, just out of earshot. But at its heart, Theatre is a simple and elegant manifestation of the dichotomy that dynamizes minimalism: how little of something -- versus how much of nothing -- must be.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
DLC 006LP
|
2023 restock. In Last Blues, De la Catessen Records presents a mysterious folio of sonic snapshots, as much recaptured as composed, by Jon Dale's project, Moth, in Adelaide in the late '90s and early '00s. We're invited to tune in to these liminal frequencies, to observe and inhabit them, and relish the glowing sensual overdrive of their manifestation. From the ready means and at-handedness of guitar, amp, and tape, a congruous but diverse selection of unnamed tracks emerge -- musical moments borrowed from oblivion with the as yet unfulfilled good intention of returning them. Their sounds evoke abstract Polaroids of winter seascapes flecked with spare, brittle detail, or the scaly-winged flutterings of elusive nocturnal insects. Here, a homely hum like a vacuum cleaner on sunny childhood's weekend morning; there, suburban power lines buzzing gently in the mist. The last track of Last Blues is like a reverent vision of lava-flow for harmonium, the slow-motion eruption of a single chord, which echoes in the mind for hours. Last Blues comes from somewhere that doesn't exist anymore, and shows us something that may never have happened there.
"Jon Dale collapses old dichotomies (such as organic vs. inorganic and heavy vs. light) into a pure horizon of tone with only guitar and a little harmonium. Sonically, it makes me think of a middle point between if Organum snuck into the studio to remix Glenn Branca, and what I imagine the electric synapses firing off in Raymond Roussel's brain would've sounded like if committed to wax cylinder. Which is to say, it sounds rad." --Ben Chasny, Six Organs Of Admittance
|
|
|
|