Montréal-based composer Chris Strickland searches not for minimalism, but to minimize: technique, narrative, emotion. All recorded live either at CKUT or Espace Project, both located in Montréal, the compositions on Excruciating Circumstances in the Kingdom of Ends reside on a different expressive axis, fingering the raw edges of his sonic ingredients. Field recordings with the flat haze of surveillance footage or the feeling of gazing from afar are interwoven with wobbly but painstaking drone notes, rarely with more than a handful in a single sequence. Unsentimental and even obstinate, there are hard cuts between sections, and—most intriguingly—a playing technique free of both emotional vibrato and focused flatness. Played notes are shaky but not hesitant. Governed pace-wise by strategies of “deliberate uncertainty,” Strickland’s compositions proceed at a walking pace, moved through like green spaces of remote urbanity.
Chris Strickland - acoustically filtered broadband noise, sine waves, resonating tin foil
Guido del Fabbro - violin
Recorded live July 25, 2013 at CKUT studios, Montréal, Québec
A Little White Space
Chris Strickland - objects, field recordings, sine waves
Solomiya Moroz - flute
Recorded live July 18th, 2012 at CKUT studios, Montréal, Québec, by Andrea Jane Cornell
Side B
Kingdom of Ends
Chris Strickland - whistles, glass jars, paper, hair, key, sine waves, field recordings
Guido del Fabbro - violin
Recorded live May 23, 2012 at Espace Project, Montréal, Québec, by Patrice Coulombe
Mastered by Branic Howard at Cloud City, Portland
Printed by John Fitzgerald at Fitzgerald Letterpress, New Orleans
Woodcut by Käthe Kollwitz: Erwerbslos (Unemployed), 1925
Layout by E. Lindorff-Ellery
Notice Recordings started in Chicago in 2009. We are now based in Kingston, NY, and Columbia, MO. We release experimental and contemporary sound works. Notice Recordings is run by Evan Lindorff-Ellery (NY) and Travis Bird (MO).
supported by 14 fans who also own “Excruciating Circumstances in the Kingdom of Ends”
Varied sonic collages, colorful as the eye-grabbing album art, twist and turn throughout Rossetto's "Fashion Tape." It's a delightful release that combines the artist's intimate drones with an almost playful plundering of samples and sounds. jckmd
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