francisco lopez: untitled #300

"Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For more than 30 years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion" --Pedro Higueras, Sonom Studios. "UNTITLED#300 is an LP based on multi-track field recordings I did in 2011 of a large colony of seagulls in a group of small islands right in front of the Moroccan-Algerian border, together with hydrophone and contact mic recordings of sea creatures underwater from the same location (side A and B of the LP, respectively). Being interested in going beyond a traditional 'soundscape' perspective, I've played freely with mixing and editing, in an unorthodox way, different multi-channel recordings I did. Side A ('abovewater') is the large seagull colony. In side B ('underwater') what you hear is predominantly millions of very small shrimp-like crustaceans, dolphin sonar (the beating pattern of the first section), and occasional fish (the 'frog-like' calls)" --Francisco López. Original environmental sound matter recorded in the Chafarinas Islands off the coast of Morocco, summer 2011. Edited, mixed, and mastered at mobile messor, The Hague, the Netherlands, summer 2012. Field work carried out with the collaboration and support of the SIGEIN-Chafarinas research group (Integral Ecological Management System of the Chafarinas Islands), directed by Francisco J. AcosPressing of 300 copies on crystal-clear 200-gram virgin vinyl packaged in a custom letterpress jacket printed, die-cut, and hand-assembled at Studio On Fire in Minneapolis, with particular care taken to retain the fine detail of the cover's microscopic type. ta (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and coordinated by Javier Zapata (Spanish National Park Service).