drop + princess road - recent tear fet sessions
Over the last week I've done at least three sessions for Tear Fet. These are mainly just playing with ideas that might be used later in more focussed collections.
The first two sessions were only minimally edited: the beginning and end of recordings cut off, volume tweaked, tracks doubled up if necessary. Today there was more planning, more elements thrown together, and more editing. The results honestly aren't that good, and probably won't get released.
The first session, Drop, was put out last Saturday, a little sooner than it honestly should have been. Compromise In A Different Way is pretty weak. There are moments where it intermittently comes together, but on the whole it's overlong and unconvincing.
Sand Spit, the other track from the same session is better, though recorded much too quietly. But if you turn the volume up it gives a better idea of what Tear Fet is about. Much of it is devoted to making two or more vocal sounds simultaneously in a live situation. There is also an element of listening to the sounds and textures created and attempting to dig into them a little. Something almost meditative.
For the reasons just given, only Sand Spit from Drop is embedded below. If you play it you will need to turn the volume up, then turn it back down if you go on to play anything else.
Princess Road is a lot more focussed. Having walked an hour through the rain, and occasionally heavy wind of the tail-end of a storm I wanted volume, and I wanted the unpredictability of environmental sound.
That said, there were fewer ideas at the start. I simply turned up the gain on my Zoom recorder, leaned out the bedroom window, and let stuff happen.
The first track is Backyard, a simple field recording of the wind making noise in the backyard, and whole load of environmental sounds from beyond, most notably traffic on Princess Road nearby. The focus here is very much on listening to the various sounds.
The second track, Dirty Light, is by far the strongest vocal experiment from the three sessions. The description written for the session probably puts it best,
'Dirty Light sees Tear Fet experiment and improvise against and over the sounds from outside. Intrusively, though initially in short bursts punctuated by silence, the voice asserts itself as the site of action beneath and around which the other sounds form a setting. Longer passages are strung together, exploring different ideas. Towards the end the voice begins to adopt mimicry of the environmental sounds, the gaps between draw out, and the voice recedes until it's gone.'
A little on the third session after embeds of the two virtual albums (strictly virtual album, and virtual EP).
Princess Road
Drop (or at least Sand Spit)
Finally, today's session had a clear set of ideas, and a clear end-point in mind, but ended up falling flat. It began with recording a description of sensory confusion induced by a combination of stress and Citalopram. Then a couple of different vocal drones allowed to tail off and start again after drawing breath were recorded.
It was very apparent that these recordings were not going to work together. So a series of other sounds were recorded in hopes of rescuing something. They included the cat purring and batting the recorder, whisking water in a bowl, handling the recorder in such a way as to purposely make noise, and finally breathing into a mug in which the recorder had been placed.
So far various combinations edited together have sounded frankly unconvincing. The drones are of no use, the spoken description kills anything it comes into contact with, and the whisked water is uninteresting. Only the cat, the handled recorder, and the breathing interest me, but don't seem to work together.
As previously you can download the sessions free at bandcamp, or from my netlabel vetch at archive.org.
The first two sessions were only minimally edited: the beginning and end of recordings cut off, volume tweaked, tracks doubled up if necessary. Today there was more planning, more elements thrown together, and more editing. The results honestly aren't that good, and probably won't get released.
The first session, Drop, was put out last Saturday, a little sooner than it honestly should have been. Compromise In A Different Way is pretty weak. There are moments where it intermittently comes together, but on the whole it's overlong and unconvincing.
Sand Spit, the other track from the same session is better, though recorded much too quietly. But if you turn the volume up it gives a better idea of what Tear Fet is about. Much of it is devoted to making two or more vocal sounds simultaneously in a live situation. There is also an element of listening to the sounds and textures created and attempting to dig into them a little. Something almost meditative.
For the reasons just given, only Sand Spit from Drop is embedded below. If you play it you will need to turn the volume up, then turn it back down if you go on to play anything else.
Princess Road is a lot more focussed. Having walked an hour through the rain, and occasionally heavy wind of the tail-end of a storm I wanted volume, and I wanted the unpredictability of environmental sound.
That said, there were fewer ideas at the start. I simply turned up the gain on my Zoom recorder, leaned out the bedroom window, and let stuff happen.
The first track is Backyard, a simple field recording of the wind making noise in the backyard, and whole load of environmental sounds from beyond, most notably traffic on Princess Road nearby. The focus here is very much on listening to the various sounds.
The second track, Dirty Light, is by far the strongest vocal experiment from the three sessions. The description written for the session probably puts it best,
'Dirty Light sees Tear Fet experiment and improvise against and over the sounds from outside. Intrusively, though initially in short bursts punctuated by silence, the voice asserts itself as the site of action beneath and around which the other sounds form a setting. Longer passages are strung together, exploring different ideas. Towards the end the voice begins to adopt mimicry of the environmental sounds, the gaps between draw out, and the voice recedes until it's gone.'
A little on the third session after embeds of the two virtual albums (strictly virtual album, and virtual EP).
Princess Road
Drop (or at least Sand Spit)
Finally, today's session had a clear set of ideas, and a clear end-point in mind, but ended up falling flat. It began with recording a description of sensory confusion induced by a combination of stress and Citalopram. Then a couple of different vocal drones allowed to tail off and start again after drawing breath were recorded.
It was very apparent that these recordings were not going to work together. So a series of other sounds were recorded in hopes of rescuing something. They included the cat purring and batting the recorder, whisking water in a bowl, handling the recorder in such a way as to purposely make noise, and finally breathing into a mug in which the recorder had been placed.
So far various combinations edited together have sounded frankly unconvincing. The drones are of no use, the spoken description kills anything it comes into contact with, and the whisked water is uninteresting. Only the cat, the handled recorder, and the breathing interest me, but don't seem to work together.
As previously you can download the sessions free at bandcamp, or from my netlabel vetch at archive.org.
Comments