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LP, one-time edition of 200 copies, pressed to 180g black vinyl and housed in a pro-printed jacket, contained in a silk-screened PVC sleeve. Returning with its final instalments, Die Schachtel's Decay Music series extends its explorations of inspired contemporary experimental efforts of the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract with Sergio Armaroli and David Toop's And I Entered Into Sleep, an astounding electroacoustic gesture of blurred space and time, plumbing complexity of meaning bound to sonority. Creatively groundbreaking and inspired, radically rethinking the terms of what ambient music can be perceived to be, it stands among the most striking efforts to appear within the series to date. Reconfiguring the notion of bridge building on a multitude of terms, it feels fitting that the tenth and final installment of Die Schachtel's Decay Music series, Sergio Armaroli and David Toop's And I Entered Into Sleep, was co-created by an artist whose work featured in the first suite of LPs issued by Brian Eno's Obscure Records in 1975, the groundwork toward which Decay Music's own efforts nod. David Toop has been regarded as a pioneer in British experimental and improvised music: a sonic voyager who has continuously challenged the sources and materiality of sound through rigorously thoughtful performances, a vast catalog of recordings, and a steady flow of highly influential texts. Be it as a member of Alterations, his group breaking group with Peter Cusack, Terry Day, and Steve Beresford that ran between 1977 to 1986, or through is noteworthy work with artists like Rie Nakajima, Thurston Moore, Paul Burwell, and numerous others, collaboration has always played a central role within Toop's singular practice. A composer, percussionist, vibraphonist, and multidisciplinary artist, Armaroli has been issuing radical and forward-thinking musical gestures for decades, working as one of Italy's most noteworthy interpreters of composer's like Giacinto Scelsi, John Cage, Franco Evangelisti, Giancarlo Schiaffini, and Walter Branchi, as both a solo performer and member of the highly regarded Rib Trio, as well as forging a singular practice as a composer. Featuring Armaroli on vibraphone and prepared vibraphone and Toop on electronics, And I Entered Into Sleep is "a sonic journey, a Proustian suggestion à la Recherche, into the unconscious between electronic and acoustic sounds." Feeling almost subaquatic at times, each artist's markedly different sound-sources dance in abstract grace, incorporating subtle nods to minimalism, free jazz, and musique concrète. And I Entered Into Sleep traverses uncharted realms at the borders of literary reference, sound art, ambience and abstraction through delicately musical sounds, revealing new depths at every turn.
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