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6CD BOX/3" CD
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SNS 014CD
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A Thousand Breathing Forms, the second boxset of Steve Roden archive works released by Sonoris, is a selection of unreleased or hard-to-locate works from 2003 to 2008, a very prolific and creative period for the Californian artist. The boxset is centered on his hard-to-describe loop based sound works that are uniquely his own, such as Stars Of Ice (2008), A Christmas Play For Joseph Cornell (2007), but also includes the conceptual "One Hour As The Bumps Of Surfaces" and some more musical or instrumental works. So Delicate And Strangely Made, the title of one of his very first records (2003), could still be the right description of his sound work, rooted in visual arts and architecture, mixing conceptual rigor, and experimentation, without neglecting musicality. Most of Roden's sound works tend towards using a singular source -- such as objects, architectural spaces, field recordings, or texts. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi; Edition of 500.
Steve Roden on the collection: "Stars Of Ice was inspired by a Chinese 7" record salvaged from a thrift store. 'Stills For Guru Dutt' came out of my love of discovering my favorite Bollywood director, and the En/Of (2004) record used the sound of the great Indian playback singer Mohammed Rafi. '22 Letters And The Resonance Of A Three Pointed Star' was inspired by an early 1960's building for the Olivetti design firm in Ivrea Italy, where the original installation was placed within the lobby where it was 'modulated' by the space. A Christmas Play For Joseph Cornell was of course, inspired by the work of Joseph Cornell, but also George Brecht's water yam scores. The banjo used in 'Banjoharmonium' was found at the flea market (my home from home), and the harmonium was a gift from my friend Damon. . . . 'To These 4 Horizons' was, again with collaborating with architecture, making recordings in the rain on the site of Le Corbusier's Ronchamp after getting lost for hours while trying to find our way through torrential rains (that you can hear on one of these tracks). 'Sleep/Walk/Drive' was a collaboration, also something important to keep one honest. The last track, so tiny, was a cover version of the oldest recorded sound we know, and the story of that not only generated this track, but a sound and video installation."
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CD
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LINE 052CD
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"Proximities was recorded in 2010 during my time as the artist-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. I began by recording a performance of a series of tones played on an old battery powered Paia Oz, that were determined by the letters A-G as found in a text by minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. I recorded the tone sequence several times during sunrise, amidst fifty of Judd's stainless steel sculptures in an old army barracks that has been converted into a museum. The performances were recorded with an H4 digital recorder, my iPhone and also a cheap Sony micro-cassette recorder. During several of the performances these small devices were emitting the sounds of previous performances from their tiny speakers. At times I also hummed. All of the processing in the recordings was generated by the extremely resonant physical space. The occasional popping sound, which can be heard at the end, are the sounds of Judd's sculpture expanding while the sunrise changed the temperature within the space." --Steve Roden
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2CD/BOOK
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DTD 020CD
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2012 reprint. Subtitled: Music In Vernacular Photographs, 1880-1955. I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces brings together a collection of early photographs related to music, a group of 78rpm recordings, and short excerpts from various literary sources that are contemporary with the sound and images. It is a somewhat intuitive gathering, culled from artist Steve Roden's collection of thousands of vernacular photographs related to music, sound, and listening. The subjects range from the PT Barnum-esque Professor McRea -- "Ontario's Musical Wonder" (pictured with his complex sculptural one-man band contraption) -- to anonymous African-American guitar players and images of early phonographs. The images range from professional portraits to ethereal, accidental, double exposures -- and include a range of photographic print processes, such as tintypes, ambrotypes, CDVS, cabinet cards, real photo postcards, albumen prints, and turn-of-the-century snapshots. The two CDs bring together a variety of recordings, including one-off amateur recordings, regular commercial releases, and early sound effects records. There is no narrative structure to the book, but the collision of literary quotes (Hamsun, Lagarkvist, Wordsworth, Nabokov, etc.). Recordings and images conspire towards a consistent mood that is anchored by the book's title, which binds such disparate things as an early recording of an American cowboy ballad, a poem by a Swedish Nobel Laureate, a recording of crickets created artificially, and an image of an itinerant anonymous woman sitting in a field, playing a guitar. The book also contains an essay by Roden. Hardback book, 8.5 x 6.5 inches, 184 pages, 150 photographs reproduced in full color and two audio CDs from the author's collection.
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