Originally released July 2013 by Draft Records, Seattle, WA
Cassette tape edition of 200
Remastered for digital September 2019
Matt Carlson’s most recent solo effort, a set of abstract, atonal electro-acoustic pieces consisting of sounds created on an analog modular synthesizer along with processed acoustic sounds and field recordings. Quiet spaces and sparse textures contrast with claustrophobic spaces of panic-attack density, forming the labyrinth of Certainty.
Certainty shares more similarities to Carlson’s previous DRAFT release Particle Language and his contribution to Dissociative Synthesis (Börft,) than to All Moments (NNA), as the pieces refrain from the use of drones and melodies and contain few metric rhythms. In part, the album serves as a document of compositional material created for live sets performed at Lampo in Chicago, Novo Doba in Belgrade, Skver in Croatia, the TBA festival in Portland, and The Lab in San Francisco, each of which has been reworked to create new studio compositions. Carlson describes his conceptual process as moving between “imaginary, real, remembered or constructed spaces”, conveying “a sense of being lost or not knowing where you are or how you are supposed to know whether where you are is real or false.” In this sense, Carlson’s signature mind-fuck perspective is deeply embedded within the sounds of Certainty.
Art/design by JEA, inspired by James Marsh’s 1985 Triad cover design of JG Ballard’s Crash.
credits
released July 1, 2013
Dot Com modular, Nord Lead, field recordings, sampled
instruments, vocoder, & effects played, recorded and
edited on computer in Portland, Oregon and Mali Losinj,
Croatia during 2012 by Matt Carlson.
Field recording on "The Content Table" taken by Claudia
Meza.
Thanks:
Jason E. Anderson, Elizabeth Pusack, Dunja Jankovic,
Chris Madak, Andrew Fenchel, Claudia Meza.
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