black to comm: earth

EARTH is a 2009 silent film by Ho Tzu Nyen, one of Singapore's foremost artists. The visually arresting film has been live-soundtracked by a number of artists (including Oren Ambarchi) in several locales, and after Black to Comm, a.k.a. Marc Richter's accompaniment at Berlin's Asian Film Festival and the Unsound Festival in Krakow (both in 2010), he decided to commit it to record. In Marc's own words: 'Most of the music was composed under the influence of heavy pain killers while recovering from a broken leg. The music (like the film) is about slowness and decay, states of unconsciousness, sleeping and waking up, dying and being reborn. The film basically is a post-apocalyptic collage based on paintings by classical European painters (Caravaggio, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Gericault) -- the music tries to translate that concept employing similar collage-based sampling techniques using loops made from vintage vinyl and shellac records combined with acoustic and electronic instrumentation and voice.' Richter's already formidable expressive power stretches over all of EARTH. Reflecting the countless cyclical forces that make up, oh, more or less everything we know and are, the music on EARTH is bracing, lovely, bustling and still, and at times bittersweet, a commingling of sensations and emotions that can't be neatly separated from one another. (EARTHis complex, as you know.) Guests on EARTHinclude David Aird, a.k.a Vindicatrix (on the Mordant Music label), contributing startling vocal work; Renate Nikolaus on an array of instruments and noise devices; Rutger Zuydervelt (singing bowls); and Christopher Kline (singing saw). EARTH is Black to Comm's seventh album and his debut for De Stijl, following the acclaimed Alphabet 1968 (on Type) and last year's vinyl-only collaboration with Mike Kelley of Destroy All Monsters (on the En/Of label).