Chicago-based Ballast, or better said Chicago-based Blake Edwards or maybe better said Chicago-based project Vertonen... Whatever, it's just words. Blake Edwards is Vertonen and has a label called Ballast. And he releases some weird stuff on there, limited as hell, little handmade pieces of art and what's most important - so consider acting very fast if you ever read something about a release you want in your collection - there are NO digital versions available. Well, *that* Blake sent us the latest releases from his label, and I have the pleasure of writing a bit about them.
The first release is a CDR entitled "Parry & Eliza" by his solo project Vertonen. It seems the "Parry and Eliza"-theme is a recurrent thing for him, but as it is impossible to know everything about everyone or hear all sounds ever produced: I missed out on all those. And I'm bummed about it because I DID hear this one ... On the CD are six sessions by Blake and his devices, and they're all between 2 and a half to 17 minutes in length, all recorded between October last year until earlier this month.
The thing is, because I didn't know what to expect, I was completely struck. In the meantime, you probably know I'm a droner, I like tension, deep basses, throbbing analogue pulses, my favourite wave is a sine and I also kinda like anything from noise to power electronics .. None of which is on this CDR. Because on this release, Blake manipulated words, just words. And they're all cut up, taken apart, moulded together, cut-pasted into layers and produced with all kinds of effects. And what the compositions did to me was putting me in a philosophical state - almost hypnotized.
If drones are made of layers with tones instead of notes, how would compositions sound if words were chosen instead of tones? And would letters be to words? What tones would be to notes? Less defined and not formed by rules, free from having to have a meaning. And are letters to words like grains/granules to sounds regarding granular synthesis? How would granular synthesis be defined if we used macro samples instead of micro grains? Do incoherent words together still form lyrics? Or maybe better: Do combined words always produce a text?
Combine all of that with artwork perfectly in sync with the coherence of incoherence, and we have a winner. In a limited edition of 29, no downloads. Yes: This one asks for a proper pressed CD release because everybody should hear this.
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