ÆTHER PENDULUM ECLIPTIC

‘At bottom the esthetic phenomenon is simple; one need only have the ability to see continually a living play and to live perpetually surrounded by hosts of spirits, and one is a poet; one need only feel the drive to alter oneself (sich selbst zu verwandeln) and to speak out of alien bodies and souls, and one is a dramatist. Dionysian excitation is capable of communicating to a whole multitude this artistic power to feel oneself surrounded by such a host of spirits, with whom one knows oneself to be inwardly one. This process (Prozeß) of the tragic chorus is the originary dramatic phenomenon: seeing oneself altered before one's very eyes (sich selbst vor sich verwandelt zu sehen) and now acting, as though one had really entered into another body, another character. This process stands at the beginning of the development of drama. ... Here already the individual gives itself up by entering into an alien nature. And what is more, this phenomenon arises epidemically: a whole crowd feels itself enchanted in this way. ‘ from Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, trans. Samuel Weber At its core, this project attempts the genesis of worlds, universes, using specific sonic and instrumental gestures. It is a project of I/Thou, in the sense explored by the above passage from Birth of Tragedy, which focuses on the invocation of a 'host of spirits' with whom we find ourselves at one; atoning, and exchanging identity, spirit, mind. The limits of mind and 'microworlds', as birthed by sound. VERWANDLUNG: Æther is one half of a 'double album' recorded across a few months in 2021. The two albums cleave in two, roughly along lines whereby the rowdier tracks fall into Prozeß and the softer tracks into Æther. But also as there are reworkings of two tracks on each, so the variation on a theme was simply appropriate to deploy in two separate 'listening blocks.' Thematically some of this material resonates with the Laws of Form EP, which was recorded 'live' in July 2021 for the Singularity Music Series curated by Alvaro Domene. In all cases, the fundamental approach to gesture which we can extract from 'Laws of Form'- whether a physical gesture, a logical gesture, or a musical/sonic gesture- this orients the work towards a critical reimagining of 'genesis' and 'consciousness'. VERWANDLUNG: Prozeß is here: thermalhowl.bandcamp.com/album/verwandlung-proze Caveat Audiens! credits released September 29, 2022 released September 2022 Ed Keller, solo electric guitar. Recorded August-October 2021. Mastered by Álvaro Domene at Singularity Studio (Kingston, New York) Tracks were recorded in improvised, unrehearsed single takes. LoopyHD was used to remix the sessions in single, performative remix takes; ÆTHER - Verwandlung [Monovocities] was recorded as pure solo in a single take. The second pass of this track appears on Prozeß as PROZEß: Verwandlung [Dialog] 'mixed' live as a double loop. Similarly, Feroce is a remix of Suspense Feroce, which appears on Prozeß. Signal path: Strandberg Boden 7 string >Audient iD4> iPad > Audiobus > BiasFX > LoopyHD > speakers. The signal path inside BiasFX is: Noise Gate > Compression > Boost > Splitter > dual Klon > dual amps [Tweed Deluxe and Matchless, sometimes a Rectifier] > Dark Memory Delay > Ambient Reverb. Album cover: Synthesized by Ed Keller using VQGAN/Clip AI/ML.