Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
sounds incred. give props to smashed plastic in chicago, who pride themselves on great detail when mushing the wax. nuanced as FUCK. the detail and clarity is insane. i'll approach any hi-fi head, slap the morning jasmine tea out their hands, and say "this here, is a good sounding record" and be able to back it up. sounds great on the stereo in my crib. yours will be raging. i just know it.
these are in hand. zero delay on shipping. its just good news all over. at least, right here in this little box of text. don't look outside, read a newspaper, or talk to anyone who has heard anything. you might get wigged out. which is okay. we just offer you an old school way to get there- deep, deep, deep, DEEP, heady choons.
Includes unlimited streaming of Bell Formations
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
unreal. brain warble/garble. its bells. bells? bells. its hypnotic in the quit smoking way. i'm down to 2 a day. can't speak for anyone else's vices or poisons. this isn't a sermon just where this music takes me.
here's a more clear headed perspective from Miles Bowe:
"A bell rings and we see a bell. Whether its chime seeped from a speaker or floated through an open window, that bell is now in front of us. With each strike, its resonance, symbolism and physicality impacts us before we’ve even perceived these sounds as “music”. To our ears, this is not immediately an instrument — it’s a bell. On Bell Formations, arriving on vinyl this spring through Ryley Walker’s Husky Pants label, sound artists Max Eilbacher (of Horse Lords) and Henry Birdsey never let you lose sight of this singular instrument, even as they turn it inside out.
Originating from a series of orchestral bell recordings by Birdsey, Bell Formations is the result of two years of trading files and sculpting sounds on a microtonal level. Showcasing both Birdsey’s precise skill at coaxing sounds through his recording and arrangements, as well as Eilbacher’s one-of-a-kind electronic processing, these sprawling pieces accentuate the natural elements of bells rather than distorting them. Embracing both subtle and extreme detunings (and retunings), the pair approach each attack and sustain as a doorway to limitless sonic possibilities. As Eilbacher explains, “Henry's bell recordings are some of the most malleable acoustic material I have worked with.”
For all of Bell Formation’s dense processing, Eilbacher and Birdsey push us infinitely closer to the instrument with every strike. Our understanding of these sounds grows more intimate, even as the sources become completely transmuted. Far beyond melting, it’s as if these bells have sublimed entirely, each ring unleashing a cloud of copper and tin. For both its careful sonic unraveling of such a powerful, seemingly unchanging instrument and the inspiring musical conversation at its core, Bell Formations stand as a thrilling debut collaboration and one of the most unique experimental recordings of this year."
credits
released April 29, 2022
Henry Birdsey: Orchestra bells, processing, arrangement
Max Eilbacher: Processing, arrangement
Owen Gardner - Album Art
Giuseppe Ielasi - Mastering
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