Mike Shiflet / Pete Swanson - "Bedside" b/w "College View" | Album Feature

Amish Records returns with another entry into their Required Wreckers Series and just in time for the crisp autumn days ahead of us. Mike Shiflet & Pete Swanson's split LP entry marks the fifth release in the ongoing series that has previously seen releases by Ben Vida, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Ensemble Economique, Gregg Kowalsky with Jozef Van Wissem, & Son of Earth. The series focus on the outer limits of artistic sound creation & each releases elegant packaging design sets it apart in a sea of over ambitious label's setting out to make a mark for themselves.

The split LP begins with Mike Shiflet's "Bedside" a beautiful, almost pastoral, electroacoustic composition. The track showcases a wide spectrum of sound and quality that incorporates multiple different sources a sound creation and processing. This ranges from the lo-fi hiss of distant field recordings to soft and lulling synthetic tones. As a listener I personally always enjoy it when a recording artist is able to seemingly blend together the history of recorded sound and new composition so thoroughly with each other.

Pete Swanson's side continues the rhythmic white noise explorations that he has been exploring for some time now. Screeches and crashes permeate the mix with a general air of chaos that is rendered with an edge of clarity that few "noise" compositions are able to capture. This isn't a sludge fest of blurry brown noise that seems to gobble up all other surrounding sounds like a black hole. There are indeed slight melodic phrases swimming throughout the fluorescent buzz and flickering bits of electronic overload.

Mike Shiflet & Pete Swanson split LP is available now via Amish Records.

Gregg Kowalsky - Electronic Music for Square and Sine Waves | Track Feature

Things are often lost or rather transformed in translation. It is almost analogous to a cut-up by Brian Gysin or William Burroughs or even a collage by Max Ernst through their transformation of a pre-exisitng entity. The same may be said of what happens when a work that employs the use of multiple sensations. In the case of Gregg Kowalsky's "Electronic Music for Square and Sine Wave" the work is grounded in the interaction of sound and space, something not readily transferable to purely audio recordings. Yet Kowalsky makes it work and beautifully at that.

In this format it seems like the emphasis of "music" as stated in the title "Electronic Music for Square and Sine Wave" comes to the forefront. As the releases press release states it is composed of multiple layers of sound sources and processing including "tuned an AM radio to random interference between channels, static abstractions that bookend the work." Beyond this  for "the core of the piece, Kowalsky used contact mics to process this, and other, sound source(s) as he moved around the performance space." The space in which the composition was performed and recorded is removed from the listeners vision and perception. It is a mortal separation between how the composition was originally received and what it now is.

But is this is not a bad thing. Separated from space and movement the overarching aesthetic nuances of sound manipulation are more readily revealed. It is at the heart of the audio work that deep listening practices can begin to work. Kowalsky creates a web of overtones and subtly moving harmonics to great effect, tones that gently wash over ones surroundings and possibly reactive their sense of time & sound in space.

Gregg Kowalsky and Jozef Van Wissem's album Movements in Marble and Stone will be available via Amish Records as an entry into the largely fantastic Required Wreckers Series this September 4th.