- ib002 - 2009 (made available december 10th, 2008, on olivier messiaen's 100 birthday)
- edition of 413
- 1 beneath the waves - 19.29
- 2 arise - 6.11
- 3 surrender - 6.40
- 4 breath of day - 27.30 *
- these pieces were composed without the use of a computer, only a turntable, old sampler
- and a portable 64-track digital workstation.
- each track is a distillation of commercially available recordings with the essential
- qualities remaining, only very brief sections are selected and the raw components then
- contracted into gradually shifting and unfolding atmospheres, offering subtle nuances
- and quiet restraint.
- fragments from these tracks include sounds from birds or water, some being partially
- obscured while others are veiled references to those elements.
- (in "broken light," the low rumbling that appears at the beginning and for the first few
- minutes is the sound of birds' wings flapping upon takeoff).
- all compositions by colin andrew sheffield
- photos by tarrl lightowler
- sleeve design by diane granahan
- seattle's colin andrew sheffield has been quietly destroying sound since the late 1990's. beginning with 1998's side one/
- side two, on his own elevator bath imprint - also home to recordings from adam pacione and rick reed, among others - he's
- been utilizing man-made and "found" sounds in a continually sweeping effort to restructure what has come before him, with
- all genres and mediums up for grabs. his work has consanguinity with many dabblers in electro-acoustic and experimental
- music; an obsession with turning mechanical, digital, and everyday sounds into contemplative drones through concentrated
- layers of sustained recording, often with the occasional sprinkling of electrified emphatics to convey external impulse or
- to mark transition.
- back in 2000, sheffield offered up his own music for surgery on the cassette-only, recycled music (rrrecords). while a
- collaborative effort, it marks an early instance of the conventions used in his music today: to literally disassemble into
- raw components a recording (tape, vinyl, microcassette, whathaveyou) and frankenstein it into music that can only be
- described as panoramic. it's a wildly unique approach that incorporates scientific methods to meet an aesthetic end.
- it is appropriate that his newest release would come in partnership with invisible birds, a concept label committed to
- expression using abstract sound and image inspired by... birds (actual and implied). such a focused model can't be without
- well-considered artwork or presentation, and sheffield's disc sure looks nice. his signatures is the second release in the
- young catalog (the first a dvd from film artist matthew swiezynski), and some detail is required to get at the music.
- a sampler, multi-track recorder, and vinyl were used to capture bird-related and -specific sound for reconstruction into
- long-play. you likely won't recognize a single source - short "clips" used are slowed to betray recognition and then layered
- in parallel and in series with some remarkable results. a sustained chord from a church organ is heard, but it's really not.
- bell-like harmonics from an analog synthesizer likely originate from a whippoorwill. our only acquaintance is the
- occasional, muffled pop from cartridge-on-vinyl. signatures is fours tracks of this, the first and last in dreamy excess of
- twenty minutes, and they are worth the sit just to hear the nuances come and go. "arise" uses trebly, airy samples and some
- killer use of reverb to evoke distance. and "surrender" is another relatively short piece, and provides the only instance
- where the disc's inspiration makes a faint, audible appearance, buried beneath thick textures.
- while the disc is copyrighted for 2009, it is released this week, and after nearly a week of continued listening it has
- crept up as my dark horse for favorites this year. fittingly, i can find no better tribute to commemorate a tunesmith of the
- same fiber, who would be celebrating his 100th birthday - olivier messiaen.
- the veil of mediated sound hangs heavy upon the work of colin andrew sheffield, a texan born sound artist currently living
- in seattle. his work is almost entirely based upon recontextualizing sounds from already released works, although unlike
- such plunderphonic artists like christian marclay, john oswald, and wobbly who allow for the samples to utter their origins,
- sheffield obliterates almost all of the references into a field of static vibrations, densely compacted layerings, and
- hyper-stretched drones. through his digital crucible, sheffield extracts something almost completely different out of the
- sources that he puts into it.
- in running the ever impressive elevator bath label, sheffield has found an outlet for a handful of his recordings, mostly as
- small run editions with the one exception being his outstanding first thus cd. signatures was commissioned by the san
- francisco based label invisible birds, as the debut in what hopes to be a great catalogue of sound art composition that's
- somehow related to bird sounds and their environment. keeping true to his working methods, sheffield's contribution to
- invisible birds reclaims sounds from other records amidst what sheffield claims to be field recordings of water and birds.
- the results have been so heavily obfuscated through the process that it's hard to hear any twitter of birdsong. the
- thunderous low-end repetition on the last track is purported to be the flapping of a bird's wing, but it's hard to discern.
- all of this said, sheffield's results are gorgeous. at first, the album has almost an ominous feel, as a shimmering, arctic
- hush is shot forth from the speakers with layer upon layer of sympathetic vibrations interweaving into a hypnotic, if
- cybernetic sound. it sounds sort of like the classic chain reaction artists like porter ricks or hallucinator with all of
- the techno extracted, and only a cold, cold drone of digitality left behind. by the end of the album, sheffield brightens
- things into a stunning crescendo of church organ-like chords suspended in time and space with glints of vinyl crackle
- hanging like sunflecked dust floating in air. here, sheffield gives the impression of william basinski reclaiming a ligetti
- choral piece. very highly recommended.
- this is the second release by a new label called invisible birds. their first release was m. swizynski's 'films 2007' we
- reviewed in vital weekly 625, although it didn't mention this as a label. the label focuses itself on releasing 'limited
- edition cds and dvds evocative of birds and the landscapes they inhabit', which i think is a very nice selection method for
- incoming demo's. colin andrew sheffield might better known from the releases on his own label, elevator bath, for which he
- released cdrs and a cd. his 'signatures' cd has its official release december 10th 2008, the 100th birthday of olivier
- messiaen, another lover of birds and music (probably in that order). sheffield uses a turntable, old sampler and a 'portable
- 64-track digital workstation' and no computer on these recordings. on the turntable lies records of nature sounds, birds
- and water, of which sheffield carefully selects fragments to sample and layer on his ancient workstation. if you staple
- enough sounds on top of eachother, then have them slightly out of sync, one can create beautiful drone music, and that's
- exactly what sheffield does here. the first three tracks are nice, but it will turn out they are exercises for what is to
- come: 'breath of day', the fourth and final epic of this, with gramophone hiss and organ like sounds, being stretched out
- over the course of the twenty-seven minutes this lasts. a true beauty, in all its simplicity. sometimes the simplest things
- is enough to get things done. the previous tracks, which lay out what sheffield wants, eventually, are great too, but aren't
- of the same beauty as the last one. if it would have been just the first three i would have been equally enthusiastic about
- this, now i'm probably ecstatic. great cd.
- the wire - outer limits - february 2009
- just as matmos makes it easy to write about their high concept hi-jinks, there's plenty of preamble when it comes to this
-
- album from colin sheffield. this artist works reductively with appropriated material, and this is a label that is dedicated
-
- to works evoking avian life and their environment. signatures presents an opaque set of recordings through that conceptual
-
- lens in these four monochromatic tracks of suspended drone and din. the flattened layers of the first three tracks have the
-
- gravity of thick grey concrete, occasionally arcing into curved surfaces and bulging masses. while it's hard to categorize
-
- any of these sounds as birdlike, they are impressively physical renderings of a minimalist ethos. the album's finale
-
- "breath of day" is considerably lighter, with a sustained tone burst that resembles the church organs from touch's spire
-
- series. sheffield directs us toward heaven: and in casting our eyes upward, there's the chance we might spot a rare bird
-
- soaring in the sunlight.
- as accretions of visibility and proximity paradoxically bring forth distance, some take to reconnoitering seamy corners and
- their singular thumb prints in a final push for renewal. 'signatures', from sound artist colin andrew sheffield, exists in
- such a vein, and it marks the inception of invisible birds as a music label.
- according to this fracturing, dislocating vision, beauty is found in the seldom seen, or in what is even quickly
vanishing.
- with this firmly in mind, birdsongs, wing flutters and movements, wrung through sheffield's turntable and 64-track digital
workstation, become inexhaustible invitations to interpretation and fantasy.
- vast quarries of well managed and mysterious layers open up on the first three tracks, held together by a curious
- incongruity. the impression is one of a naturally occurring body of spacious drones, buried under layers of warm grit, and
- glowing amber and grey in intermittent bursts of light.
- after the detail and imagery of these pieces are pushed into the red, where they momentarily lose their tenuous grip on
- intelligibility, the album slips into its twenty-seven minute closing composition, "breath of day". a rattling, slightly
- damp sound, smeared with suggestions of eschatological fervor, particularly in the way in which the melody line staggers to
- keep pace with the sustained organ tones. the refined nature of the piece is an emphatic contrast and capstone to the artful
- tampering of the initial triad of works. from ashes to flames, the visible to the invisible, signatures parts with message
- mongering in favor of far greater rewards.
- issued on the centenary of olivier messiaen's birth (10 december), this is a fascinating series of sound studies. his name
- suggests a slightly geeky englishman, but sheffield is in fact american, & his work has been in circulation for some years,
- created using nothing more than "a turntable, a nearly 20-year-old sampler, and a portable 64-track digital workstation" -
- the resulting music betrays little of these simple means, though. there's an elliptical quality to many of the tracks,
- particularly the epic "breath of life", where organ textures wax & wane above an omnipresent drone. the special edition of
- 60 copies all enclosed within sumptuous packaging, plus a bonus 3" cdr is sold out (i'm delighted to possess a copy), but
- the standard edition is still available here.
- speaking of colin sheffield, it's been a while from when diane and matthew at invisible birds sent this cd, which - needless
- to say - was lying in my archive crying for attention. and it deserved it, therefore shame on the late reviewer as usual,
- although it is impossible to follow a steady rhythm with all the good (and bad!) stuff that flows in the mailbox. signatures
- was composed on a portable 64-track digital recorder, a turntable and an old sampler. no computer in sight. the four tracks
- (five in the limited edition) were created by the exploitation of commercially available recordings, stretched, elongated,
- filtered and camouflaged until their features became completely unrecognizable. a beautiful record indeed, containing music
- which one could remotely associate to artists like janek schaefer, stephan mathieu and philip jeck but not so vinyl-tinged,
- even if we clearly distinguish typical pops and scratches here and there. what the work privileges is a practically constant
- superimposition of harmonic layers, rarely shaded with the recognizable qualities of a timbre (for example, the organ in the
- splendid "breath of day"), utterly rewarding without sounding neither overly nostalgic nor menacingly austere yet also
- floating in a foggy dimness often bathed in quasi-industrial trance. for sure the anguish that some of these pieces elicit
- didn't make me think of degradation or decay, instead transmitting sensations that reinforce the still unbroken link with an
- indescribable endlessness which, absurdly, causes a dejected feeling of near-conclusion. the perennial antagonism between
- mortality and the rest of the things that we'll never see or even know about.
- through his unique, non-digital manipulation of old field recordings, colin andrew sheffield conjures forth an album of
- sounds we never pay attention to, the elemental ambient white noise beneath all the traffic, conversation, and things
- falling over of our daily lives.
- the opening track sucks the listener into a vortex redolent of the atmospheric conditions inside a black hole. "arise"
- follows with a greater intensity, which increases as it "rises", a huge but slightly uncalibrated ventilation fan wobbling
- on its axis. "surrender" is like waking up in an airplane in the middle of the night, all the other passengers asleep, all
- light extinguished and that constant whoosh outside the fusilage the only sensory input being registered. as on any flight,
- the ear eventually acclimatizes it into a soft featureless music.
- the half-hour long "breath of day" is a sacral commune, a huge pipe organ in a forest of redwoods - grandly meditative,
- gavin bryars in californian woods. its majestic and methodical pace is ocassionally sped up as the keys of the organ are
- more rapidly palpated, like the cardio-pulmonary system becoming excited by some insight emerging during contemplation
- before being assimilated and regaining its steady calm.
- it's a remarkable achievement, fascinating in concept and execution and ultimtely, most importantly, in the lasting
- impression it makes.
- for those of you who don't already know cas is the pair of ears behind the rather wonderful elevator bath label, he's also a
- dronescaper of some distinction in his own right. 'signatures' is a 4 song set where colin displays his deft touch at each
- of the four main forms of drone music.
- opener, 'beneath the waves', is 20 minutes of gently wafting smoke trails that hover and disperse in the most beguiling of
- ways. 'arise' on the other hand is a dark and forceful assault on one's sensibilities full of acute angles and clashing
- colours. by the time track three's 'surrender' gets it's chance in the sun we are well on our journey and it's poised noise
- drone is the perfect panacea after the turmoil of what's gone before. album closer 'breath of day' is, for me, it's absolute
- pinnacle a glorious soaring tower of tones and drones. it's crystal clear and the view from the top is magnificent.
- a drone masterclass. do yourself a favour and grab a copy.
