invisible birds

colin andrew sheffield
signatures (2009)
-

ib002 - 2009 (available december 10th, 2008, on olivier messiaen's 100 birthday)
edition of 413

1 beneath the waves - 19.29
2 arise - 6.11
3 surrender - 6.40
4 breath of day - 27.30

these pieces were composed without the use of a computer, only a turntable, old sampler
and a portable 64-track digital workstation.

each track is a distillation of commercially available recordings with the essential
qualities remaining, only very brief sections are selected and the raw components then
contracted into gradually shifting and unfolding atmospheres, offering subtle nuances
and quiet restraint.

fragments from these tracks include sounds from birds or water, some being partially
obscured while others are veiled references to those elements.
(in "broken light," the low rumbling that appears at the beginning and for the first few
minutes is the sound of birds' wings flapping upon takeoff).

all compositions by colin andrew sheffield
photos by tarrl lightowler
sleeve design by diane granahan

reviews:

bagatellen

seattle's colin andrew sheffield has been quietly destroying sound since the late 1990's. beginning with 1998's side one/
side two, on his own elevator bath imprint - also home to recordings from adam pacione and rick reed, among others - he's
been utilizing man-made and "found" sounds in a continually sweeping effort to restructure what has come before him, with
all genres and mediums up for grabs. his work has consanguinity with many dabblers in electro-acoustic and experimental
music; an obsession with turning mechanical, digital, and everyday sounds into contemplative drones through concentrated
layers of sustained recording, often with the occasional sprinkling of electrified emphatics to convey external impulse or
to mark transition.

back in 2000, sheffield offered up his own music for surgery on the cassette-only, recycled music (rrrecords). while a
collaborative effort, it marks an early instance of the conventions used in his music today: to literally disassemble into
raw components a recording (tape, vinyl, microcassette, whathaveyou) and frankenstein it into music that can only be
described as panoramic. it's a wildly unique approach that incorporates scientific methods to meet an aesthetic end.

it is appropriate that his newest release would come in partnership with invisible birds, a concept label committed to
expression using abstract sound and image inspired by... birds (actual and implied). such a focused model can't be without
well-considered artwork or presentation, and sheffield's disc sure looks nice. his signatures is the second release in the
young catalog (the first a dvd from film artist matthew swiezynski), and some detail is required to get at the music.

a sampler, multi-track recorder, and vinyl were used to capture bird-related and -specific sound for reconstruction into
long-play. you likely won't recognize a single source - short "clips" used are slowed to betray recognition and then layered
in parallel and in series with some remarkable results. a sustained chord from a church organ is heard, but it's really not.
bell-like harmonics from an analog synthesizer likely originate from a whippoorwill. our only acquaintance is the
occasional, muffled pop from cartridge-on-vinyl. signatures is fours tracks of this, the first and last in dreamy excess of
twenty minutes, and they are worth the sit just to hear the nuances come and go. "arise" uses trebly, airy samples and some
killer use of reverb to evoke distance. and "surrender" is another relatively short piece, and provides the only instance
where the disc's inspiration makes a faint, audible appearance, buried beneath thick textures.

while the disc is copyrighted for 2009, it is released this week, and after nearly a week of continued listening it has
crept up as my dark horse for favorites this year. fittingly, i can find no better tribute to commemorate a tunesmith of the
same fiber, who would be celebrating his 100th birthday - olivier messiaen.

~ alan jones

**********

aquarius records

the veil of mediated sound hangs heavy upon the work of colin andrew sheffield, a texan born sound artist currently living
in seattle. his work is almost entirely based upon recontextualizing sounds from already released works, although unlike
such plunderphonic artists like christian marclay, john oswald, and wobbly who allow for the samples to utter their origins,
sheffield obliterates almost all of the references into a field of static vibrations, densely compacted layerings, and
hyper-stretched drones. through his digital crucible, sheffield extracts something almost completely different out of the
sources that he puts into it.

in running the ever impressive elevator bath label, sheffield has found an outlet for a handful of his recordings, mostly as
small run editions with the one exception being his outstanding first thus cd. signatures was commissioned by the san
francisco based label invisible birds, as the debut in what hopes to be a great catalogue of sound art composition that's
somehow related to bird sounds and their environment. keeping true to his working methods, sheffield's contribution to
invisible birds reclaims sounds from other records amidst what sheffield claims to be field recordings of water and birds.
the results have been so heavily obfuscated through the process that it's hard to hear any twitter of birdsong. the
thunderous low-end repetition on the last track is purported to be the flapping of a bird's wing, but it's hard to discern.
all of this said, sheffield's results are gorgeous. at first, the album has almost an ominous feel, as a shimmering, arctic
hush is shot forth from the speakers with layer upon layer of sympathetic vibrations interweaving into a hypnotic, if
cybernetic sound. it sounds sort of like the classic chain reaction artists like porter ricks or hallucinator with all of
the techno extracted, and only a cold, cold drone of digitality left behind. by the end of the album, sheffield brightens
things into a stunning crescendo of church organ-like chords suspended in time and space with glints of vinyl crackle
hanging like sunflecked dust floating in air. here, sheffield gives the impression of william basinski reclaiming a ligetti
choral piece. very highly recommended.

~ jim haynes

**********

vital weekly

this is the second release by a new label called invisible birds. their first release was m. swizynski's 'films 2007' we
reviewed in vital weekly 625, although it didn't mention this as a label. the label focuses itself on releasing 'limited
edition cds and dvds evocative of birds and the landscapes they inhabit', which i think is a very nice selection method for
incoming demo's. colin andrew sheffield might better known from the releases on his own label, elevator bath, for which he
released cdrs and a cd. his 'signatures' cd has its official release december 10th 2008, the 100th birthday of olivier
messiaen, another lover of birds and music (probably in that order). sheffield uses a turntable, old sampler and a 'portable
64-track digital workstation' and no computer on these recordings. on the turntable lies records of nature sounds, birds
and water, of which sheffield carefully selects fragments to sample and layer on his ancient workstation. if you staple
enough sounds on top of eachother, then have them slightly out of sync, one can create beautiful drone music, and that's
exactly what sheffield does here. the first three tracks are nice, but it will turn out they are exercises for what is to
come: 'breath of day', the fourth and final epic of this, with gramophone hiss and organ like sounds, being stretched out
over the course of the twenty-seven minutes this lasts. a true beauty, in all its simplicity. sometimes the simplest things
is enough to get things done. the previous tracks, which lay out what sheffield wants, eventually, are great too, but aren't
of the same beauty as the last one. if it would have been just the first three i would have been equally enthusiastic about
this, now i'm probably ecstatic. great cd.

~ frans de waard

**********

the wire - outer limits - february 2009

just as matmos makes it easy to write about their high concept hi-jinks, there's plenty of preamble when it comes to this
album from colin sheffield. this artist works reductively with appropriated material, and this is a label that is dedicated
to works evoking avian life and their environment. signatures presents an opaque set of recordings through that conceptual
lens in these four monochromatic tracks of suspended drone and din. the flattened layers of the first three tracks have the
gravity of thick grey concrete, occasionally arcing into curved surfaces and bulging masses. while it's hard to categorize
any of these sounds as birdlike, they are impressively physical renderings of a minimalist ethos. the album's finale
"breath of day" is considerably lighter, with a sustained tone burst that resembles the church organs from touch's spire
series. sheffield directs us toward heaven: and in casting our eyes upward, there's the chance we might spot a rare bird
soaring in the sunlight.

~ jim haynes

**********

tokafi

as accretions of visibility and proximity paradoxically bring forth distance, some take to reconnoitering seamy corners and
their singular thumb prints in a final push for renewal. 'signatures', from sound artist colin andrew sheffield, exists in
such a vein, and it marks the inception of invisible birds as a music label.
according to this fracturing, dislocating vision, beauty is found in the seldom seen, or in what is even quickly vanishing.
with this firmly in mind, birdsongs, wing flutters and movements, wrung through sheffield's turntable and 64-track digital
vast quarries of well managed and mysterious layers open up on the first three tracks, held together by a curious
incongruity. the impression is one of a naturally occurring body of spacious drones, buried under layers of warm grit, and
glowing amber and grey in intermittent bursts of light.
after the detail and imagery of these pieces are pushed into the red, where they momentarily lose their tenuous grip on
intelligibility, the album slips into its twenty-seven minute closing composition, "breath of day". a rattling, slightly
damp sound, smeared with suggestions of eschatological fervor, particularly in the way in which the melody line staggers to
keep pace with the sustained organ tones. the refined nature of the piece is an emphatic contrast and capstone to the artful
tampering of the initial triad of works. from ashes to flames, the visible to the invisible, signatures parts with message
mongering in favor of far greater rewards.

~ max schaefer

**********

5 against 4

issued on the centenary of olivier messiaen's birth (10 december), this is a fascinating series of sound studies. his name
suggests a slightly geeky englishman, but sheffield is in fact american, & his work has been in circulation for some years,
created using nothing more than "a turntable, a nearly 20-year-old sampler, and a portable 64-track digital workstation" -
the resulting music betrays little of these simple means, though. there's an elliptical quality to many of the tracks,
particularly the epic "breath of life", where organ textures wax & wane above an omnipresent drone. the special edition of
60 copies all enclosed within sumptuous packaging, plus a bonus 3" cdr is sold out (i'm delighted to possess a copy), but
the standard edition is still available here.

~ simon cummings

**********

temporary fault

speaking of colin sheffield, it's been a while from when diane and matthew at invisible birds sent this cd, which - needless
to say - was lying in my archive crying for attention. and it deserved it, therefore shame on the late reviewer as usual,
although it is impossible to follow a steady rhythm with all the good (and bad!) stuff that flows in the mailbox. signatures
was composed on a portable 64-track digital recorder, a turntable and an old sampler. no computer in sight. the four tracks
(five in the limited edition) were created by the exploitation of commercially available recordings, stretched, elongated,
filtered and camouflaged until their features became completely unrecognizable. a beautiful record indeed, containing music
which one could remotely associate to artists like janek schaefer, stephan mathieu and philip jeck but not so vinyl-tinged,
even if we clearly distinguish typical pops and scratches here and there. what the work privileges is a practically constant
superimposition of harmonic layers, rarely shaded with the recognizable qualities of a timbre (for example, the organ in the
splendid "breath of day"), utterly rewarding without sounding neither overly nostalgic nor menacingly austere yet also
floating in a foggy dimness often bathed in quasi-industrial trance. for sure the anguish that some of these pieces elicit
didn't make me think of degradation or decay, instead transmitting sensations that reinforce the still unbroken link with an
indescribable endlessness which, absurdly, causes a dejected feeling of near-conclusion. the perennial antagonism between
mortality and the rest of the things that we'll never see or even know about.

~ massimo ricci

**********

sonomu

through his unique, non-digital manipulation of old field recordings, colin andrew sheffield conjures forth an album of
sounds we never pay attention to, the elemental ambient white noise beneath all the traffic, conversation, and things
falling over of our daily lives.
the opening track sucks the listener into a vortex redolent of the atmospheric conditions inside a black hole. "arise"
follows with a greater intensity, which increases as it "rises", a huge but slightly uncalibrated ventilation fan wobbling
on its axis. "surrender" is like waking up in an airplane in the middle of the night, all the other passengers asleep, all
light extinguished and that constant whoosh outside the fusilage the only sensory input being registered. as on any flight,
the ear eventually acclimatizes it into a soft featureless music.
the half-hour long "breath of day" is a sacral commune, a huge pipe organ in a forest of redwoods - grandly meditative,
gavin bryars in californian woods. its majestic and methodical pace is ocassionally sped up as the keys of the organ are
more rapidly palpated, like the cardio-pulmonary system becoming excited by some insight emerging during contemplation
before being assimilated and regaining its steady calm.
it's a remarkable achievement, fascinating in concept and execution and ultimtely, most importantly, in the lasting
impression it makes.

~ stephen fruitman

**********

wonderful wooden reasons

for those of you who don't already know cas is the pair of ears behind the rather wonderful elevator bath label, he's also a
dronescaper of some distinction in his own right. 'signatures' is a 4 song set where colin displays his deft touch at each
of the four main forms of drone music.
opener, 'beneath the waves', is 20 minutes of gently wafting smoke trails that hover and disperse in the most beguiling of
ways. 'arise' on the other hand is a dark and forceful assault on one's sensibilities full of acute angles and clashing
colours. by the time track three's 'surrender' gets it's chance in the sun we are well on our journey and it's poised noise
drone is the perfect panacea after the turmoil of what's gone before. album closer 'breath of day' is, for me, it's absolute
pinnacle a glorious soaring tower of tones and drones. it's crystal clear and the view from the top is magnificent.
a drone masterclass. do yourself a favour and grab a copy.

~ ian holloway