a decade’s dust. witness the rise and fall, a civilization’s worth of creative tools and machinery. the sediment of a lost heaven, universal shipwreck. ten years ago while traveling i came upon an old copy of jacques lacarriere’s the gnostics, a strange attractor. weird poetic phrases resonated, a body of unfinished recordings grew. each attached to a place or person or moment. what is finishing, anti-enlightenment, knowing more but actually less. war and nutrition, intervening archons: operating systems, social media, techno-utopianism. blurry realities blocking the path forward, looking beyond, no path. just here. an embodying and not dividing force, the ash and the stars.
gnostics
- nothing
- the second circle
- the serpent
- aeon
- sleep
- the circle of dark fire
- pneuma
- gnosis
- wide awake
- the ash and the stars
- silence as antimatter
https://tehn.bandcamp.com/album/gnostics
process notes
parts of this collection come from very different years, with very different approaches and instruments and intentions. these recordings accumulated weight the longer they hid away. a strange sort of weight. refusing to be deleted, but preventing sustained momentum for other exploration. i’m glad to finally share with you this peculiar energy.
- most of these began as chance captured improvisations, as i’m not good at remembering to record.
- some are process music, unfolding with some predetermined structure with unexpected results.
- one is a soundtrack for a friends’ dance-circus piece. (waiting for permission to share).
- one was made while falling asleep.
- a couple are monotonously multitracked and meticulously layered with maximum neuroticism.
- a large number of oh-absolutely-surely-to-be-included tracks were deleted.
- there is field recording. i cannot take credit for nature’s sounds, or the weather.
- parts of some have been played live in many countries over many years (one felt like it was melting a sound system in finland)
- one i don’t remember making.
most use some sort of software or hardware i’ve made, but that’s never been the focus. the tools should get out of the way.
the tool list: norns, mlr, grid, arc, aleph, juno 106, re-201 space echo, op-1, aalto, mangrove(s), three sisters, rip, ansible/kria, ms-20, bitwig, meadowphysics, ozone, colorbox, youtube, usi pro, paper and pens, barn as resonator, wind, forest
thank you @kelli_cain @instantjuggler @Galapagoose @objectgroup @zebra
what a relief.
ps. additional imagery at nnnnnnnn.co
