Releases & Publications

The Webster Cycles
Cold Blue Music
Los Angeles, California
(CD, 2008; CB0026)



A single 30-minute piece that straddles the fence of structure and improvisation: all of the words in the dictionary that use only the letters A-G, arranged in alphabetical order. Each word is played for the length of one long breath, and within that the letters/notes are played spontaneously, as are dynamics, timbre, etc. This very lush multi-tracked version is for six trombones, all performed by the fabulous J.A. Deane. Reviews: Amazing Sounds, Classical Net, Eartrip (scroll way down), Gaz-Eta (scroll way down), Kathodik (in Italian), Musicweb International, Santa Fe Reporter, Sequenza21, Textura, Touching Extremes (scroll way down), Vital Weekly (scroll way down), The Wire (May 2008, not online)





Filtered Light (chamber music 4)
Dragon's Eye Recordings
Seattle, USA
(CD-R, 2008; de5017)

Chamber Music is a series of site-specific sound installations derived from recordings of the empty rooms in which the work is exhibited. Luminous resonant frequencies pulled from thin air, sound that aspires to the qualities of light, slowly shifting in tone and intensity with the passing of time. Filtered Light was a version made for the UNM Art Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2008. Reviews: Cyclic Defrost, Earlabs, Igloo, Signal to Noise (Fall 2008, not online), Tokafi, Touching Extremes (scroll almost to bottom), Vital Weekly (scroll way down), White_Line, The Wire (June 2008, not online)


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Occasional Music
Palace of Lights
Hawaii, USA
(CD, 2007; PoL 0703)



Music for real instruments that has been used for dance, theater, and film. Something to confuse everyone: Satie-esque piano (played by Robin Holcomb), swirling minimalist accordions, Javanese gamelan, jazzy trumpets, electro-acoustic mayhem, pretty female voices, Fourth World fusion, drifty electric guitar. You had no idea, did you? Reviewed at Amazon, Earlabs #1, Ectomag, Psyche Van Het Folk, Sea of Tranquility, Terrascopic Rumbles (scroll way down), Textura, Vital Weekly (on Earlabs).



Three Rooms
Sirr
Lisbon, Portugal
(CD, 2007; Sirr 0029)



Documents three sound installations: a re-mastered version of Delicate Abrasions (sounds of playing an old warehouse in Santa Fé), a completely remixed version of Center of Gravity (processed breath sounds for one of Susan York's "graphite rooms" at School of the Art Institute of Chicago), and the original version of Mountains Hidden in Mountains (from a single strike of the meditation bell at a zendo in Albuquerque).

Reviewed at: Boomkat, Disquiet, e/i, d'Mute (French), Furthernoise, Gaz-Eta, Kathodik (Italian), Neural, New Media Fix, Octopus (French), Sands Zine (Italian), Tokafi, Touching Extremes (scroll down almost to end), Vital Weekly, The Wire (October 2007, not online)



Post-Minimalism
Trace Label
Paris, France
(CD, 2007; Trace 024)



2-CD compilation featuring 19 composers from 4 countries, all of them found on MySpace by producer Hervé Zénouda. Includes Ancestral Memory, which can also be heard on Occasional Music.



From Shelter
Cold Blue Music
Los Angeles, California
(CD, 2004; CB0018)



Four short pieces composed for Shelter, a 1998 dance/theater work written and choreographed by Lane Lucas: Three Short Stories (a fine powder/nothing but love/lavender) with Alicia Ultan, violas; My burning skin to sleep... with Marghreta Cordero, voice; SP, piano. Reviews: Classical Net, Dusted, The Improvisor, Sequenza21 (scroll down), Sonic Curiosity, Textura. Listen to Nothing But Love:


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Agnes Martin: With My Back to the World
New Deal Films
Corrales, New Mexico
(DVD, 2003; ISBN 1-878917-10-2)



Soundtrack for the documentary by Mary Lance on the great abstract painter. Some of the music was remixed from earlier work, some was composed especially for this project, with Ben Daitz on viola. Agnes Martin's work has been hugely inspiring to me, and I am honored to contribute to this project. In 1980 I saw a show of her work in Seattle – a room full of large, white canvases. But if you looked at them long enough, they seemed to glow with different colors; her trademark horizontal bands of color were buried beneath layers of white gesso, seeping through like overtones. I spent the next twenty years trying to figure out how to do that with sound (see the Emanations CD). Reviews: collected reviews, New York Times, Slant, Village Voice. Listen to an interview on WNYC with director Mary Lance.



Delicate Abrasions
pianíssimo
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(3" mini CD-R, 2003; ppp03; out of print)



Documentation of a site-specific sound installation at Klaudia Marr Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Limited edition of 100 copies in handmade rusted steel sleeve with printed color insert, cardboard inner sleeve, clear vinyl jacket. Remastered version available on Three Rooms from the Sirr label (see above).



Silents
effe
Japan
(CD, 2002; ef02-002)



A compilation of very quiet works by four composers:

Francisco López (Spain): untitled #120 (2001)
Steve Peters (USA): agung (2001), for seven Javanese gongs
sukora (Japan): Hill
Bernhard Günter (Germany): elliptical entropy (2000)

Listen to agung (headphones required):


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Here-ings: a sonic geohistory
La Alameda Press
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(Book + CD, 2002; ISBN: 1-888809-38-83)



This book and CD document a site-specific installation created at THE LAND/an art site in Mountainair, New Mexico. With photographs by Margot Geist.

Twenty-four hours of field recordings were made over the course of one year at various places on this forty-acre site dedicated to low impact, land-based art. These were edited down to a 72-minute sound collage, mixed with contact microphone recordings of various objects found at the site such as grass, cactus, trees, ants, and wire fences. Short poetic texts evoking the sounds heard during each recorded hour were engraved on stone and steel listening benches that are placed permanently on all of the recording sites. The book contains essays discussing the process and ideas behind the creation of the work, the listening bench poems, and a detailed track list of all the sounds heard on the CD. Also available from Earth Ear, and/OAR, and the Deep Listening Institute. Listen to 7 AM - Mockingbird Aria with Harvester Ants:


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in memory of the four winds
pianíssimo
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(CD, 2000; ppp01)



Music composed for Flight Path, choreographed by Doranne Crable for Kagami Butoh. Sound sources include insects, violin, wind, stone, trees, voice, feedback, water, suling gambuh, birds, electronic processing. Available from Earth Ear, and/OAR, and the Deep Listening Institute. Reviews: All Music Guide, Amazing Sounds, Ambient Visions (scroll down), Vital (scroll down). Listen to a condensed version:


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Site of Sound: of architecture & the ear
Errant Bodies Press
Los Angeles, California
(Book + CD, 1999; ISBN: 0-9655570-2-2)



Edited by Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden, Site of Sound is an anthology focusing on current trends in experimental music, sound art and audio theories, featuring writings, visual works, interviews and artist projects by leading experimental composers, sound-artists, and architects whose work concerns itself with architectural and acoustic space, sound sculpture, field/environmental investigation and recording, and site-specificity. (other artists: Michael Brewster, Loren Chasse, Philip Corner, Moniek Darge, David Dunn, Max Eastley, Rolf Julius, Alison Knowles, Christina Kubisch, Rupert M. Loydell, Tom Marioni, Christof Migone, Tim Robinson, Minoru Sato, Jio Shimizu, Jake Tilson, Giancarlo Toniutti, Jalal Toufic, Toshiya Tsunoda, Ralf L. Wehowsky, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Achim Wollscheid)

Includes a recorded excerpt, score, and essay about Sight Specifics: Santa Fe, one of a series of works in which I invite others to visit particular places and record their spontaneous descriptions of what they observe there. This version is an edited performance by intermedia artist Ann Racuya-Robbins, recorded in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Listen:


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Sound
Refusalon Gallery
San Francisco, California
(CD, 1998)

Compilation from gallery show, with an excerpt from Sight Specifics: Diablo Canyon, performed by David Dunn. (other artists: Bill Fontana, Joe Bloggs, Paul De Marinis, Lewis DeSoto, Gustavo Matamoros, Doug Harvey, horea, Guy Hundere/Totemplow, Brandon LaBelle, Ati Maier, Tom Marioni, Guy Overfelt, Steve Roden, Heather Sparks/Adam Sinykin, Jake Tilson, Illana Zuckerman) Listen to the entire remixed and unedited piece:


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emanations
OO Discs
Black Rock, Connecticut
(CD, 1998; oo34)



Sound from an installation with visual artist Claire Giovanniello. A vaporous cloud of pure tones made with controlled feedback, hovering on the threshold of audibility. Available from Pogus, and/OAR, and the Deep Listening Institute. Reviews: All Music Guide, Amazing Sounds. Listen to an excerpt (headphones required):


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Cassette Mythos
Autonomedia
Brooklyn, New York
(Book, 1990; ISBN: 0-936756-69-1)



Edited by Robin James, this overview/anthology of documents from the international underground cassette network ca. mid-late 1980s includes Tape Recorder as Audio Camera: Snapshot Radio/Cassette Magazine, an essay co-written with Rich Jensen about our early work with field recordings and found audio. I thought this was out of print, but it is still listed on the publisher's web site. Robin still maintains an online version with occasional updates. (a companion CD, Audio Alchemy, was also released on Nonsequitur's ¿What Next? label, available from Pogus)



The Aerial - a journal in sound, #1
Nonsequitur
Santa Fe, New Mexico
(CD/Cassette, 1990; AER1990/1)



Idumea, an improvisation on a shape-note hymn for voice, violin, and home-made bass recorder (under name Lost Souls) included on compilation CD that I also produced. (other artists: Christine Baczewska, Floating Concrete Octopus, Malcolm Goldstein, Jerry Hunt, Rich Jensen, Richard Kostelanetz, Loren Mazzacane & Suzanne Langille, David Moss, Bern Porter, Terry Setter, Stuart Sherman) CD out of print, cassette available from the Deep Listening Institute. Listen here:


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