Label: Recital

200部限定、16ページブックレット付き!!当店では既にReading GroupからのCD音源にて紹介済みである、1994年ボルチモア出身、現在はニューヨークを拠点に活動するサウンドアーティストSydney Spann。様々な生き物が住む架空の部屋をイメージした前作[Oceanic​/​E​.​L​.​M.]が素晴らしい完成度でしたが、その評価も関係してかなんと米Recitalからヴァイナルデビュー!!部屋鳴りっぽい通好みの抽象音響から、自身が歌う子守唄的フォークソングまで、全体像が明確で無いミステリアスな要素が魅力の大推薦アルバム。180グラム重量盤。





• Limited edition of 200 pc
• 180gram vinyl
• 16-page color artists booklet
• .PDF of Spann's thesis

The first vinyl release from American artist Sydney Spann, Sending Up A Spiral Of well encapsulates Spann’s body of work thus far. On their music, which reacts to themes of family systems and care work, Sydney writes, “people who have done care work —nannies, sex workers, therapists, nurses— may possess their own musical knowledge, developed over time through particular modes of voicing practiced to achieve a desired outcome in their labor. Attending intimately to these ways of voicing and listening and bringing them into a sound practice could be a way to legitimize a less recognized kind of musical knowledge.”

Sending Up A Spiral Of explores this unarticulated expression through sound and song. The titular piece traces Spann within some quixotic woodland, as if beginning inside of some urban fairy-story. Self-soothing singing quivers under dragging branches, peeling cement and other tactile grit. The work drops into a new proximity half-way through as electronic contours overtake the environment. Sine-tones smolder in a pulsating choreography, perhaps reminiscent of Richard Maxfield’s “Night Music” played at half-speed.

The second section of the record depicts a series of five smaller portraits, expressed (or disguised) as lullabies. An oceanic humming permeates them. “Possession” and “Purposeful Evening” are the most song-like lullabies, with their verse-chorus repetition and melodic simplicity. Innocuous words “baby” and “honey” are encoded with deeper, often painful connotations. Sydney’s voice and vision for this album is ambitious, cloaked in the strains and contradictions of what love means in the nuclear family.

A 16-page artist pamphlet of rubbings, photographs and sheet music accompanies the LP, along with a digital PDF of Spann’s thesis “Sending Up A Spiral Of: A Musical Epistemology Made Through Care Work.”