VISITING THE SKY - Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Side A
1. Harbour (soundtrack to the 16mm film by Eric Stewart) - 18:26
Side B
1. Idly Sit The Sun - 18:35
The two tracks stretching each side of this LP register two different approaches.
The first track is the result of a collaboration for the film "Harbour" by Eric Stewart. Here, John's intentional score finds a functional equity with the themes, images, and ideas inherent in the work. Dreamlike atmosphere combined with sonic detail provides listeners with an almost visible resonance, as apparitions of Westward Expansion echo through every transition and phase of the recording.
Harbour is a 16 mm film focusing on the English Fascination with the Pacific Northwest. It evaluates ecological simulation and historic recreation to find in Landscape a stage for the enactment of the Other. In the 19th century English aristocrats were especially fascinated with the large evergreens of the Pacific Coast. Entrepreneurs and naturalists began importing spectacular trees, such as the California Redwood, throughout the United Kingdom. This importation of fauna was part of a circuit of appropriation through recreation; where the English simulated, in garden and greenhouse, the ecology of colonial landholdings while exporting English culture and architecture to said colonial locales.
For the second side, John utilizes audio oscillators and control signals that favor more discordant and angular structures, eventually settling into an ethereal mood with spacious guitar, keyboards and field recordings that ease the listener toward the afterglow of an early evening winter sun.
All tracks were created using electronics, keyboards, stringed instruments, tape loops and field recordings
Recorded at Fern Place Studios 2016/2018
Mastered by James Plotkin
Images courtesy of the Library of Congress Prokudin-Gorskii Collection
Bimodal Press, BMP002, 2018
REVIEWS: BEACH SLOTH
