Douglas Witmer
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
the album is finished & available!
The Consolidated Hand Mouth & Ear Institute's debut album Condensery is now available.
A hand-numbered, limited-edition CD is available for order via PayPal ($11.00 US includes shipping). The album is available for download as well; either as individual tracks or in its entirety. You can sample and purchase the music right from this post! Read on...
The record is primarily instrumental and the arrangements are highly repetitive. I describe it as a blend of electronic and acoustic instruments arranged in spacious ambience with shimmering percussion, mellow chording, and heavy slow bass beats. But hey, you can listen for yourself!
Much of the record was composed in the summer of 2004 in a cabin outside of a little town called Onekama (oh-NECK-uh-muh) in northwestern Michigan, just off the shore of Lake Michigan. The spot has always been a special place for me; much of my fundamental creative thinking and action seems to happen there.
Lorine Niedecker, Milwaukee, 1967. Photograph by Jonathan Williams
The seeds of this project were planted years ago. In 1996 at a neighborhood yard sale I naively picked up a book called "The Granite Pail--Collected poems of Lorine Niedecker." Lorine spent the majority of her life across Lake Michigan in rural Wisconsin developing a body of work known for deep expressiveness despite it's spare use of language. I can't explain why, but her poetry and the story of her life have haunted me ever since that day. Working hard on this music back in 2004, I'd stand at the edge of the water looking west, and imagine the things Lorine might have seen, standing on the opposite shore. The album title "Condensery" comes from a line in one of her works.
The album art features a few (from my collection of several thousand) photos of Lake Michigan, taken over the past 13 years.
Below are samples of each track, in their album sequence. They are approximately 1 minute (1mb) each.
I hope you enjoy the record, and let me know what you think! This is very new territory for me.
AUDIO SAMPLES
DOWNLOAD--Click Here
or
ORDER THE CD ($11.00 US includes shipping)
Labels: Consolidated Hand Mouth and Ear Institute, music
20.3.07 