invisible birds

colin andrew sheffield
signatures - 2009

ib002 - 2009 (available december 10th, 2008, on olivier messiaen's 100 birthday)
edition of 513

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

(breath of day excerpt)

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 morley
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