U50 | Jeph Jerman | Imbrication
Imbrication_excerpt1
Imbrication_excerpt2
format : CD ltd to 200 hand numbered copies
Regular edition of 150 copies come with an additional art card on 300gr satin paper
Special ultra ltd edition of 50 copies. Packaged in thick kraft recycled cardboard digisleeve with frame. it holds a set of 4 double-sided interchangeable art cards on 300gr matt coated satin paper.
+ a fifth one with liner notes.
Inner sleeve features a strip of old paper glued with egg white (none will be the same) mentioning edition number + artist’s name and title.
Digisleeve comes in a resealable cello.
release year : 2018
length : 42’13
track : Imbrication
status : still available
>>> order via Paypal : chalkdc@unfathomless.net
Regular edition (STILL AVAILABLE !)
(Belgium) : 14 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 15 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 16 € (inc.postage)
Special ultra ltd edition (SOLD OUT !)
(Belgium) : 17 € (inc.postage)
(Europe) : 18 € (inc.postage)
(World) : 19 € (inc.postage)
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: info :
The Verde River Valley is located in central Arizona, in a transition zone between low desert to the south and high mountains to the north. It has been my home for the past 17 years. Walking though the uninhabited areas outside of town, one encounters a wide variety of plant life: cactus as well as pine trees, creosote and crucifixion thorn, winterfat, mullein, snakeweed, hackberry, yucca and agave. There is also a plethora of debris from hundreds of years of human presence. Scatters of rusty metal cans and broken glass, half-buried automobiles and construction detritus, old homesteads and mines, as well as many ruins of prehistoric Indian sites. On my days off, when the weather is nice, i look for places where i can interact sonically with the land, improvising with found objects or amplifying barely audible sounds. Old fences and stock tanks give out metallic scrapes, pings and squeaks. Temporary water holes contain aquatic insects making a variety of buzzing, clicking and whirring sounds. Water itself gurgles, passing through rock-cut channels. The air is filled with the humming of flies and bees and the calls of crows. Airplanes over head. Far off road traffic.
These recordings were made with a stereo digital recorder and an old analog tape machine, contact mics and hydrophone, and occasionally a small battery powered amplifier.
(Jeph Jerman, 26 February 2018)
: reviews :
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I think I’ve only heard one thing from Jerman in the last few years (‘Matterings’, his collaboration with Tim Barnes on Erstwhile) and prior to that, nothing since around 2010, though I have plenty from the oughts. Even so, ‘Imbrication‘ (yes, I had to look it up: the overlapping of edges, as in tiles or scales) fits in very well with my previous Jerman-ic listening. Recorded at various sites that seem to cluster around the American West, it begins with a long section of dry objects rubbed, rustled and otherwise gently assaulted. As ever, Jerman possesses an uncanny sensitivity and sensibility in his choice of objects, touch and sound placement, something very “natural” but also quick and unhesitant. An interlude of booming noises, sounding as though he’s smacking the edge of his fist against an empty oil drum briefly shifts the focus, before the raspy shaking and rattling resumes. There seem to be machines or rotating devices in play, recalling the shaking tables used in his fantastic ‘Lithiary’ (Fargone, 2005) and the work closes with echoes of that, what sounds like marbles being rolled around the top of a rough, circular surface. Jerman is wonderful at extracting a nearly infinite amount of sounds and layers from the most basic of substances. He does so once again, here.
Brian Olewnick
Just Outside
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The latest from Arizonian Jeph Jerman comes in three formats, you can download this on Bandcamp, or you collect wither the hand-numbered standard edition CD or the special edition CD which comes in a neat cardboard packing – only 50 of these, and each one slightly different. The title infers patterned, overlapping edges, and that’s what he delivers here. Jerman takes us on a forty-two minute journey through Arizona’s Verde River Valley where you will encounter bees, siphoned waterways, and other minimal encrusted overturned earthen objects. Made with a digital recorder and an old tape machine you can hear pops and hiss almost mimicking similar sounds in the wild. Cricket-like noises sound like Morse code in their amplified form.
In one moment these field recordings sound playful, then it’s a bit unconscious, and with the detachment of direct sensory exposure makes this a wild guessing game of place and goings-on. But you are right there, in the pocket of the explorer, breaking branches, with solid steps through a field of sorts, some sounds are watery, others dry. The actions are layered, and all the fuss is made with metal, wood and natural materials. As most know a desert is usually a dry place, with plenty exposure to the open light, the Sun having done its harshest wrath, so beyond the insect songs one can imagine a cloud of dust in the wake of the frenzied toiling away about sixteen minutes in where the hurried pace intensifies over mountainous regions.
A giant aerated gust blows through, shaking, pulsing, constant – most anything in its wake. Eventually it sounds like a portable generator buzzing away. Small mechanical tape sounds only occasionally dot this otherwise ominous atmosphere. This is followed by the reverberations from inside some kind of metal drum, being knocked and struck from inside and out, partly obfuscated. When Abraham Lincoln uttered the phrase “action speak louder than words” it was a testament to these such recorded things – to the adherence of ones personal unbroken, unspoken constitution. Wind causing the rattle of chain link fence, and other anonymous creaking leads to an open valley of layered dragging and other wild flapping in open air. The clamor is rustic and randomized by nature, as un/intended with man-made objects planted on its surface. The concept of layers is literal and figurative throughout, but its in the last six or so minutes that the proverbial cat loosens its way out of the bag. The p/r tells us that this is a series of old fences and stock tanks emitting these metallic squiggles, at times it sounds like an antique dry cleaner at work on machines long past their prime, but it’s when Jerman plays on the ranges of what’s audible, within and beyond range, that the belly of this beast is revealed. It’s all in the buzz and circumstance.
TJ Norris
Toneshift
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2018 has been a quiet year for field recording labels, as many major players have slowed production or gone on hiatus. Not so Brussels’ Unfathomless, which celebrates its 50th and 51st releases this season and shows no signs of slowing down. Sister label Mystery Sea is also stirring from a long slumber. One of the few physical labels left in the field, Unfathomless continues to produce high-quality CDs with a unified cover aesthetic.
Golden release #50 comes from Jeph Jerman and is available in both regular and special editions to mark the occasion. Imbrication is a single track soundscape recorded in the Verde River Valley of Central Arizona. It’s also (for me at least) a great new vocabulary word, meaning “an overlapping of edges,” “a decoration or pattern,” or both. As Jerman explores his valley, he encounters numerous examples of imbrication (see, I used it in a sentence!): places where plant life and human debris blur. In Jerman’s own words: “Walking though the uninhabited areas outside of town, one encounters cactus as well as pine trees, creosote and crucifixion thorn, winterfat, mullein, snakeweed, hackberry, yucca and agave … scatters of rusty metal cans and broken glass, half-buried automobiles and construction detritus, old homesteads and mines.” What a playground for the curious sonic explorer! Interacting with his environment, Jerman taps, rattles, shakes, and makes music with found objects, turning trash into tune, dueting with water and earth, bird and bug. In so doing, he reclaims the desert as a place of beauty despite of ~ or perhaps (in a slightly uncomfortable way) because of human intrusion. A quarter-hour in, some of his rattling even sounds like raining.
Jerman is in love with his locale and its sonic possibilities. His sounds are a dialogue between nature and detritus, familiar to any child who has ever discovered a resonant pipe or a rickety fence, or has wondered why broken ice and broken glass look so similar yet sound so different. In the 21st century, we’ve become used to material and sonic pollution, from children living in Indian garbage dumps to the difficulty of finding “one square inch of silence.” An old phrase comes to mind: “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” And if life gives you garbage, make music.
Richard Allen
A Closer Listen
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The first time I heard the word ‘imbrication’ was when PGR used it in the late 80s as a term for their music. It is also the last time I heard it and perhaps that is strange. It is a word that is actually very useable for music, where stuff is usually layered. Jeph Jerman uses it here and he lists a whole bunch of locations where he made his recordings, so I assume there is some layering. It is unusual for a release on Unfathomless to have recordings from nine different locations. Usually it is one or two. The cover shows images of some of these locations and curious enough there are also small battery operated speakers to be seen, which made me believe that Jerman performed sounds on locations with natural elements. Which is in fact something I believe he does for some time. These days we don’t hear a lot of his music, unlike the late 80s/early 90s when he was working as Hands To and in a more electronic/noise area. Since the mid 90s he works with sounds on locations and that sets his work apart from the ‘other’ people who work with field recordings. Quite rightly Unfathomless is very happy with the addition of a work from him to their catalogue, and they asked me to inform you that they now also have a limited art edition with a set of a different set of covers available from their releases. Their regular edition still looks fine to me, as always. The music is an excellent mix of field recordings and manually operated sounds. In the first half there seems to be insects and water sounds, maybe frogs near a pond, in other sections it is less obvious. There is a section where rocks are rolled around, there is a section in which there is some rusty metal being twisted and in the middle there is something electronic, like the vibrating of a plate upon a metal surface. And all of this flows very slowly into each other, quite a like a journey over a rocky mountain road. This may not be an all too standard release for this label; the fact that it is different is surely a most welcome addition to the label’s already great output.
Frans de Waard
Vital Weekly
Unfathomless 