Skip to Content Skip to Navigation
Join the email list!

{}: Home

Gears of Sand Showcase Live at OTP! - July 28, 2010

Mark your calendars for Saturday, August 7 at 8pm:

Ben Fleury-Steiner, William Fields, and Mikronesia will be playing at legendary music journalist and now live music curator Darren Bergstein's ONE THOUSAND PULSES (OTP). OTP is the northeast's premier electronic /experimental music home concert series.

More info on the series below and check links for connecting to the OTP official website.

One Thousand Pulses is a home concert series featuring artists operating throughout the spectrum of electronic and experimental music. From our base in northeast New Jersey, we provide a truly dynamic, connective, and resonant experience for both performer and audience, the foundation for a broad-based network of similar venues initiated on local, regional, and national levels.

July 27, 2009


Now available: Dreamwords by Drape



We've been chomping at the bit to release this fantastic work to the masses but, alas, delay, delay has left this waiting in the wings...

The wait is over. And here's the scoop: If you haven't heard of the innovative, incredibly talented duo, Drape, you soon will.

We were lucky enough to be able to release Dream Words-- which was recorded more than two years ago by this Seattle based Ryan Gracey and Spencer Williams-- and another long finished masterwork will be issued by the great Infraction records in the coming months.

What makes Drape special isn't that they can craft drones as deep and shimmering as any other ambient heavyweight on the block (Bissonnette, Kowalski, Bible & Henry, Baker, Hecker etc.). It's their remarkably innovative approach to sound.

Field recordings and other sound sources combine to form a language all their own. Indeed, "Dream Words" rivals any release in our catalog for the most fitting title. The bottom line is if you like expertly detailed ambient compositions to both soothe and engross yourself in then look no further than the shadowy beauty of Drape.

A quote on their website from W.H. Hudson's classic "A Crystal Age" captures the poetic intentions of Drape's deeply realized Dream Words:

"I sat there in the dark, wondering, as men will wonder at such moments, what this tempest of the soul which music wakes in us can mean: whether it is merely a growth of this our earth-life, or a something added, a divine hunger of the heart which is part of our immortality."


Link to Sound Samples & Purchase




Now available: luminance of a perfectly diffusing surface by pholde - July 5, 2009

Longtime and prolific sound artist Pholde is the ambient side of Alan Bloor, who is also known for his extreme noise project called Knurl. Pholde creates ambient soundscapes by the bowing and scraping of self-created metal sound-sculptures with other metal objects. For the first time on this recoring, Alan introduces the subtle and beautiful accompaniement of violin.



The resulting violin works absolutely wonderfully with signature pholde 'floating metal' ambience. There's a remarkable refinement of composition here as well; improv and open but just the right economy: never do strings sound cliche against the always interesting songs of the prepared metals nor vice versa. The violin is like a siren song wafting in the shadows of the singing scrap yard. The strings play as do the metals--with just the right doses of restraint and space--co-mingling to, as, indeed, a most 'luminous' effect.

Link to Sound Samples & Purchase