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COELACANTH
THE CHRONOGRAPH
Press Release
Sound much more than visual culture or
the poetics of language often eludes the self-explanation of
from demonstrative signifiers. In categorizing sound within
the semiotic realm, contemporary post-structuralist theories
and utopian ideologies may add baroque flourishes to the sound
work at hand; but such overemphasis upon intention over execution
has the potential to leave the work aesthetically hollow. Thus
it is not uncommon to find within experimental musics that meaning
is assigned to the work before an audience can develop a critical
reading for themselves. Collaborating under the moniker Coelacanth,
Loren Chasse and Jim Haynes have intentionally reversed this
dialogue to put the aesthetic process ahead of a conceptual
manifestation by favoring evocation, empathy, and transcendence
through sound. Initially, Coelacanth's quest may have been to
engage the drone supreme, an aesthetic previously sought by
C.M. von Hausswolff, Morton Feldman, and :zoviet*france:. Yet,
the duo is known to get distracted by the minutiae of sound
itself, or some instantaneous revelation about the history of
decay, or simply the sublime beauty of nature. The drone in
fact does go on, but it's course is quite circuitous.
The Chronograph is the debut release from Coelacanth. The
album opens with an lengthy passage of creakingly creepy submariner
ambience as if the oxidization process itself had been amplified
within the realm of the audible. Spiked electrical surges and
controlled feedback oscillations build the intensity of the
album, until Coelacanth unleashes their symphony of tiny whirring
machines, gritty textual striations, and clattering pulsations.
The Chronograph then descends into a blissful tone float
of dense bell reverberations and oceanic washes of shortwave.
Independent of each other, both Haynes and Chasse have qualified
this album as 'phosphorescent'. |
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