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HISS TRACTS - Shortwave Nights

Format: LP
Label & Cat.Number: Constellation Records CST104-1
Release Year: 2014
Note: new project consisting of guitarists DAVID BRYANT (GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR, SET FIRE TO FLAMES) and KEVIN DORIA (GROWING, TOTAL LIFE) going into a more experimental drone direction => quite heavenly, melancholic guitar drones & harmonies merge with electronic waves, found sounds, mysterious hummings... 10 tracks of carefully constructed, emotional dronescapes... comes with download code and two 12" x 24" inlays / posters
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €20.50
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More Info

"180g Vinyl mit Kunstdruck und Downloadcode. "Shortwave Nights" ist das Debüt von HISS TRACTS, einem neuen Duo aus David Bryant (GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR, SET FIRE TO FLAMES) und Kevin Doria (GROWING, TOTAL LIFE).

Die beiden trafen sich 2004 und begründeten eine musikalische Freundschaft, die in drei GROWING Alben mündete, die im The Pines Studio von Bryant in Montreal aufgenommen wurden und in mehreren Kollaborationen mit z.B. dem experimentellen Filmkünstler Karl Lemieux. Probebänder für ein Underground Film Festival in Lausanne 2008 wurden zur Basis für HISS TRACTS; David und Kevin arbeiteten zwischen 2009 und 2013 daran, doch vieles von der Magie der ersten Versionen ist noch immer greifbar.

Kevin und David sind instrumentale Musiker von ungewöhnlicher Tiefe und Intensität. HISS TRACTS eröffnet neue kollaborative und erzählerische Pfade, um die beiden Musiker die Soundlandschaft von Komposition und Produktion erforschen zu lassen.

Beide sind Gitarristen und die E-Gitarre erscheint als Quelle von 'Shortwave Nights', doch die Fülle an zusätzlichen analogen Quellen und Signalen stellt sicher, dass dieser Sound hier nicht mit gitarrenbasiertem Drone, Noise oder Postrock verwechselt wird.

'Shortwave Night' setzt sich über solch engmaschigen Genrebegriffe hinweg und lässt sich ebenso wenig in die vorherrschenden Subgenres einordnen.

Wenn Drone jedoch der Orientierungspunkt ist, dann liegt das sicherlich an dem Mix, der die einzelnen Elemente zu einer Wall of Sound in Stereo vereint.

Dies ist keine Elektro-Platte und 'Shortwave Nights' begibt sich auch nicht in die Welt von Ambient oder Wave, vielmehr lässt sich der Sound hier im breiten Abstammungsfeld von Post-Industrial und Musique Concrète verorten.

Shortwave Nights is the debut album by Hiss Tracts, a new duo featuring David Bryant (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Set Fire To Flames) and Kevin Doria (Growing, Total Life). The two met in 2004 and struck up a musical friendship that led to three Growing records being made at The Pines (Bryant's recording studio in Montreal) and a separate collaboration between the two, initially in conjunction with experimental filmmaker Karl Lemieux (also GY!BE's current 16mm auteur/projectionist). Rehearsal tapes from a set of sessions for a Lausanne Underground Film Festival performance in 2008 became the foundation and starting point for Hiss Tracts; David and Kevin continued working throughout 2009-2013, but much of the material from their earliest session is still present, in one state or another, within the tracks on this debut album.

The sonic preoccupations of Bryant and Doria are well-known and well-documented across many highly acclaimed recordings over the past fifteen years, from the organic, group-based, semi-improvised collage albums of Set Fire To Flames to the glimmering, immersive minimalism of Growing and the more maximalist full-spectrum noise works of Total Life. David and Kevin are instrumental music practitioners of uncommon depth and intensity; Hiss Tracts opens new collaborative, procedural and narrative pathways for these fine musicians to continue exploring soundscape-based composition and production. Both are guitar players, and the electric guitar figures as both recognizable and unrecognizable source instrument on Shortwave Nights, but the deployment of a wide range of additional analog sources and signals ensures that there is no confusing this for a guitar-based drone, noise or post-rock record.

Shortwave Nights defies categorization by terms like "drone" or "ambient" and it does not easily slip into any of the predominant subgenres that have proliferated around studio-based soundscape work in recent years. Insofar as drone is a touchstone, this has mostly to do with the approach to mixing, which tends towards a transcendent/trance-inducing integration of elements into a unified, saturated, wall-of-sound stereo field. The album contains no beats or programming and very little that is identifiably loop-based or overtly sampled and sampler-driven. Occasional deployments of digital signal processing remain firmly in the service of Hiss Tract's overriding framework and commitment to analog sources and human instrumentation. This is not an electronic record, nor does it sit comfortably at either the pastoral or spooky/sinister poles of any ambient or 'whatever'-wave spectrum; it can perhaps best be placed within the broad lineages of post-industrial and musique concrète.

Meditative and visceral, humming with the electromagnetic atmosphere through which all manner of frequencies, transmissions and surveillances pass and collide, Shortwave Nights strikes an evocative balance between sonics captured-channeled-harnessed vs. composed-sculpted-performed, with an almost documentary rigour and restraint that nonetheless remains profoundly charged and engaged. Constellation is thrilled to introduce this new project with a brilliant debut album that has heavily infiltrated our brains and bloodstreams since Bryant and Doria first played us the nearly-finished recordings in the fall of 2013. Thanks for listening.

Release date: 13 May 2014
Running time: 44:28

Packaging notes
CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve. LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve, credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album."


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