Artist : Morgan Packard
Title : Airships Fill the Sky
Genre : Electronic
Year : 2007
Date : 07/10/2007
Bitrate : VBR kbps
Tracks : 09
Label : Anticipate Recordings
Source : CDDA
Encoder : Lame 3.97
Length : 50:40 min
Size : 74,0 MB
Tracklist:
----------
01.Airships Fill the Sky 06:59
02.I Think I... 04:43
03.Mink Hills 03:36
04.A Place Worth Keeping (part 1) 04:20
05.A Place Worth Keeping (part 2) 05:35
06.Dappled 07:34
07.Kelp Sway 05:46
08.Waterbugs 07:54
09.They Will Rise Forever 04:13
-------
50:40 min
Morgan Packard's debut solo full-length, Airships Fill the Sky, finds him folding cello, accordion and
saxophone into a decidedly digital context - involving fragmented elements of techno, house, breakbeat
oriented microsound and post-ambient tendencies - retaining his acoustic sensibilities in earnest, while
taking advantage of his long-time immersion in a variety of electronic genres. While he has further honed
the melodic, textural meanderings from some of his past work, here, Packard returns to his rhythmic roots,
and continues to filter his jazz and classical background through everything he does. Deftly using his self
-made software techniques, he puts these pieces together with a view towards the hypnotic power of the
loop, coupled with a distancing from it. Remembering its importance as the structural basis of a musical
landscape which has influenced him, he allows his loops to take on new properties, evolving incrementally
and moving further from their origins.
From the opening, title track's accordion lines into house bumps, to "Mink Hills" - with its symphonic
clusters sitting harmoniously in layers of horizontal sound and clattering percussion pops - to the
unabashedly funk-filled synth movements of "Waterbugs" - Packard manages to span a variety of musical
choices and retain a coherence throughout. With a heavy emphasis on sound design - both in the close-
ups of sonic minutiae and the wider swathes which cut across tracks - he exhibits technical savvy coupled
with compositional inventiveness.
The accompanying Unsimulatable DVD provides a snapshot into the collaboration between Packard and
Joshue Ott. Ott uses his homemade software, entitled superDraw, to wield a flexible, visual instrument.
Using a digital drawing tablet and pen to input simple sketches of lines into the computer, Ott effects and
bends these lines to create something far removed from the original input, nestling into a comfortable
space of abstraction that is oddly familiar in its curiosity and fresh in its mannerisms.
superDraw examines and interprets the constant motion - both of the hand/stylus as it moves around the
tablet, and of the line after it exists inside the software. This analysis allows the creation of movement that
is inspired by the results of the original input, lending itself to a cycle of input/output that is consistently
influencing and referencing itself, so that the blurring of the lines - both literally and figuratively - is part and
parcel of the experience. What begins as a simple line becomes multiples of new shapes and angles, with
often muted - and sometimes stark - washes of color running over and through contrasted black and white.
The collaboration between Ott and Packard (which includes almost exclusively different music from the
CD) is the culmination of two years of playing live shows together and consistently honing their interaction
and the means by which their computers communicate with each other. Though individual scenes can be
devised beforehand, neither program allows deferred creation, so no editing is possible, and the entire
piece had to be recorded live in one take.
Bonus material on the DVD includes audio-visual sculptures, a music video and details about the project
and the artists.
http://www.anticipaterecordings.com/