[microsound-announce] PSA 057: millised on juured, et sidur

[. m u r m e r .]

forwarding this along from jim haynes...

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Hello and welcome to yet another public service announcement from the 
Helen Scarsdale Agency.

A few months have passed since we've published anything, and that was 
due to a consolidation of the fabrication departments of the Agency 
under one roof. The sound and design studios were separated from the 
printing and corrosion services by a sizable body of water and one very 
long bridge; but now all is housed in one complex -- not entirely 
organized to our satisfaction, but good enough for us to begin 
soliciting sales for the latest publication -- a mesmerizing album of 
field recording and hallowed minimalism from Patrick McGinley (aka 
Murmer). This is the second of McGinley's albums that we have been 
blessed to release into the world, and it's quite a gem. We won't be 
issuing this for a few weeks -- July 3, in fact; but we are now 
accepting pre-orders on the album for those so inclined. With just 400 
in limited production, we hope you would be inclined.

And now, the details:

Murmer
/What Are The Roots That Clutch/
Helen Scarsdale : HMS022 : CD
mail order price : $13.00
release date: July 3, 2012

It was a cavernous tone that broadcast from a ventilator duct that 
inspired Patrick McGinley to begin collecting field recordings and 
working them into his slow-arc compositions. At the time when he heard 
that particular tone in that particular city at that particular time, he 
had no gear to recording device on hand. Over the next fifteen years 
(and counting) McGinley has eased into a peripatetic lifestyle, 
wandering the European countryside and forests (but never straying too 
far from the thrum and spark of civilization) in search of the same 
epiphany with his head rattled to the sound of a cavernous air duct.

Around 1996, McGinley adopted the moniker Murmer for his compositional 
work; and though his work often steps into the quieter realm of sound 
construction, much of his field recordings and resultant compositions 
privilege interference and disturbances that occur within any given 
sound ecology. Those sounds could be the elusive tone from that 
ventilator, the polyrhythmic chorus of chirping frogs, the abstracted 
roar from an Arctic wind tearing across the Black Sea, or the metallic 
skree from a bowed antenna perched atop a Soviet-era observatory. /What 
Are The Roots That Clutch/ marks McGinley's first full album in nearly 5 
years, but it marks an elegant continuation of his previous album /We 
Share A Shadow/. The five chapters of this album can't easily be 
associated with any specific location; instead McGinley overlaps and 
crosshatches his field recordings and abstractions into acousmatic 
passages with ghostly, half-melodic qualities. Even the two unprocessed 
recordings of the album are impossibly complex in their accretions of 
sound. McGinley's composed pieces embrace lithe, mysterious drones whose 
mossy, damp atmosphere perfectly situate with tactile crunches, tactile 
events, and signal noise generation. Eels and leaches would not be out 
of place in such an environment; but the subaquatic murk snaps into a 
hallowed manifestation of ritualized minimalism at the album's finale/ 
-- one that LaMonte Young and Angus Maclise might have conjured in 1968 
with clattering percussive elements and a hypnotic blur of harmonic drone.

/What Are The Roots That Clutch/ is limited to 400 copies and comes 
housed with letterpress artwork.

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HMS021: Jim Haynes /The Decline Effect /2LP
HMS020: BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa /Big Shadow Montana/ LP
HMS019: RV Paintings /Samoa Highway /LP
HMS017: Spiracle /Ananta /2CD
HMS016: irr. app. (ext.) /Kreiselwelle/ CD
HMS015: Matt Shoemaker /Erosion of the Analogous Eye/ CD
HMS014: Loren Chasse & Michael Northam /The Otolith/ CD
HMS013: BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa /Passing Out /CD
HMS012: Omit /Interceptor/ 2CD
HMS011: Murmer /We Share a Shadow /CD
HMS010: Matt Shoemaker /Spots in the Sun/ CD
HMS008: BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa /Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna/ CD
HMS007: Waldron / Stapleton / Sigmarsson / Haynes / Faulhaber /The 
Sleeping Moustache/ CD
HMS006: Spoonbender 1.1.1 /Stereo Telepathy Academy/ CD
HMS005: Omit /Tracer/ 2CD
HMS004: BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa/ Vikinga Brennivin/ CD (final copies!!!)
HMS002: irr. app. (ext.) /Ozeanische Gefühle/ CD

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We thank you very much for your time and attention; and as always if you 
wish to be removed from the mailing list from the Helen Scarsdale 
Agency, please respond to this message with "Remove, please" within the 
subject header.

Yours in magnanimity,

The Helen Scarsdale Agency
http://www.helenscarsdale.com <http://www.helenscarsdale.com/>
http://www.facebook.com/helenscarsdale