A record here is not a song. It is material.
Shellac 78s, location tape, a guitar laid flat with hardware between the strings. This archive files the work by what it was made from and what was done to it.
Pieces · The entry to start with
A piece assembled, not composed
The unit of work is not a song with parts but a length of recorded time built out of found and captured material, layered until it holds together. What that changes about how you listen to it.
Every entry is about a piece or a method, never about a person.
Where a fact is uncertain the entry says so rather than filling the gap. Provenance — what entered the room, and how — is recorded because it is part of how the sound behaves. How entries are written
Methods
Preparing a guitar
Objects placed between and on the strings change the instrument into a set of unpredictable resonators. What is reliable about it and what is not.
Sources
Shellac
78rpm discs are loud, narrow-band and full of surface noise, and all three are material rather than defects.
Scores
Scoring with texture
A film cue that carries dread without a theme, a key or a resolution.
Methods
Tape as an instrument
Loops, speed changes and layering treated as playing rather than editing.
Pieces
The long fade
Beginning and ending without an event, and why it works.
| Entry | Section | |
|---|---|---|
| Field recording | Sources | |
| The turntable as a source | Methods | |
| Surface noise | Sources | |
| Silence as a cue | Scores | |
| Duration as a decision | Pieces | |
| Provenance | Sources |
