Polarity Review From Musique Machine

Review from Musique Machine

Jason Zeh - Polarity [Handmade Birds - 2012]
A simple but professional package, here, from Handmade Birds: a neatly printed inlay card, with introductory notes from Zeh; and a red cassette with on-body printing. The tape contains one long track on each side, both based around recordings of the electromagnetic fields produced by tape machines. Zeh picks up these fields using telephone coil mics, which convert them into audio signals. My small experience of using these mics, has normally resulted in pretty static, crackling drones and hums; so I'd wager that Zeh is achieving his sounds from mixing and layering his multiple tape machines' fields, as well as eq-ing.
Side A is a very static, strong drone; recorded live in October 2011. Constructed out of several layers of tones and hums, it pursues a straight line more-or-less until its end. Zeh tweaks his materials very subtly, with his main techniques pulling them in two quite different directions. The first of these is towards beating tones and throbbing pulses; the piece begins with a gently throbbing low end, and throughout the track these modulations rise and fall - though never with any overwhelming strength (thus maintaining the tension of the drone). The second direction goes the opposite way entirely: rather then playing layers against each other, Zeh somehow coaxes singing tones from them. Thus, tibetan bowl-like drones emerge from the main body of sound; before diminishing, and returning. The piece ends with the sounds of tape reels, amplified by contact mics; these rather decrepit rhythms carry the track to its close, with Zeh creating a nice stereo-bouncing effect.
The second side of the tape, according to Zeh's inlay notes, was created by subjecting recordings of electromagnetic fields to a "variety of tape-based processes of manipulation." The track begins, perhaps unpromisingly, with the sound of slurring tape - and then Zeh brilliantly grinds this sound into the ground. He doubles it, layers it; makes it resonate and reverberate - it really is a masterful piece of work. In terms of what's actually occurring, you might imagine (at the most basic level) someone manipulating a loop; but perhaps a more helpful notion is someone like John Butcher constantly producing a very short passage on the sax (trilling, even), with equally constant variations of tone, timbre and melody. There's a relentless, vigorous exploration of the initial slurring sound - in fact, Evan Parker would be the more obvious saxophone parallel, given his spiralling repetitions. Zeh teases out all kinds of colour, making the track growl and vibrate; building it into buzzing maelstrom with malevolent traces, before it decays down into a warbling drone. After this, Zeh breaks it further; till the listener is left with scratchy, hesitant whines and murky rumbles, slowly playing out in an ocean of tape hiss. Its quite mesmeric.
Whilst the first side of Polarity is undeniably competent and enjoyable, it's the reverse offering that truly makes a name for Jason Zeh. There are a few projects that properly explore the use of tapes and tape machines - rather then simply using recorded sounds on tape as source material - and it's sometimes an area that produces rather austere works, given the limitations of the "instruments." Polarity, though, shows Zeh to be capable of creating great colour, from the barest of sounds. I'm loathe to saddle him with the burden of "the acousmatic Evan Parker," but in case his future reveals that: you heard it here first.

from Aquarius Records.
ZEH, JASON "A Vacant Lot To Be In"
"The resurgence of the cassette as a viable media may provide an additional context for the work of Jason Zeh, as his gritty drone-noise constructions are entirely based on the contact points between magnetic tape and the tape heads that read / translate that magnetic information into sound. His approach to sound often deals with the dis...location of this contact point, which is akin to the way that Christian Marclay, Gum, or Phillip Jeck approach the turntable. Zeh might wield sandpaper to abrade the tape itself, magnetized razor blades to slice the tapes, leaving irradiated coronas of electrical hum near the edit, and even smearing globs of dirt into the gears and mechanics of the tape deck. All of these very tactile methods impart very tactile results, and as such, A Vacant Lot To Be In is much more akin to Chop Shop's obliterated tape saturation than the somber self-immolation found on William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. Both tracks on this vinyl only release rise through scabrous crumplings into a steady arcing mass of high-voltage dronework whose phase shifting patterns give the impression of an electrified sea of ferric oxide churning through tidal forces. One of the sides builds towards an intense crescendo of turbulent, boiling, junked noise, while the flip eerily navigates an insectoid minimalism. Zeh's work is very strong and deserves as much acclaim as we can muster, especially given his relatively low profile. Highly recommended for fans Joe Colley, Hive Mind, Mike Shiflet, and the more industrially slanted aspects of contemporary sound art. Oh yeah, limited to just 300 copies."

Printing Proof: A Vacant Lot To Be In Artist Edition VHS & Audio Cassette

They still make CDs?

Selfies and Stills

The colorful ones are stills from Auto Tracking 1: the video component of the artist edition of A Vacant Lot To Be In. The others are pictures of my face and a studio shot.

Teaser: A Vacant Lot To Be In artist edition VHS

More Teasers

Here is the finalized, full color, artwork for the cassette and VHS that will come with the artist edition of A Vacant Lot To Be In. I am about to send them off to the Risograph printers after running into some problems and other work demands over the last week. These are going fast. So, contact CIP if you want to reserve one.

Artist Edition VHS Cover

Here is the Black and White art for the VHS that comes with the Artist Edition of A Vacant Lot To Be In.

The final version will be a full color Risograph print of this design. If you are interested in getting one, make sure that you reserve it soon. They are quickly disappearing.

Update: as of now, there are only five of these left that are unspoken for. If you want one contact Crippled Intellect Productions.

Soup Of Freak

Soup of Freak, a 62 artist compilation featuring me, is available here

A Vacant Lot To Be In currently available.

Here is the  info from the label.

Order now from CIP

WHOO HOO! JASON ZEH'S "A VACANT LOT TO BE IN" IS NOW READY TO SHIP!

I'm overjoyed to announce that the regular edition of this LP is ready to ship; see below for information on the artist edition.

CIP24: Jason Zeh: A Vacant Lot To Be In LP
edition of 300 copies, silkscreened back sleeve and mounted risography image on the cover.
$16 ppd in the US; if you're overseas, inquire first for shipping costs.

Jason Zeh is a hands-down master of cassette tape and cassette playback devices. Using magnets, metal, plastic, car stereo tape adapters, cassette players without tape, cassette tape loops, modified tape decks, and sand paper (among other devices), Zeh creates two tracks that swim through hiss, grit, and wavering, fractured soundwaves to create some of the most engaging audio I've had the pleasure to hear.

This recording reflects not only Zeh’s dedication to mastering and refining his source material of choice, but also a drive to explore and mine new facets of that source material for some truly rewarding audio.

Artist Edition:

There is an artist editon, but please note IT IS NOT YET AVAILABLE; as it's the end of the semester, both Jason and I are a bit slammed with student needs, and the production and assembly process takes a bit of time. However, here are the details and the pricing.

the artist edition includes:
--a cassette with an alternate mix of side 2 one one side and a reworking of source material on the other
--a vhs tape of video treatments Jason has been working on; very much a visual interpretation of his audo processes (approx 20 minutes)
--a combination cloth / custom wallpaper wall hanging wrapping the entire release (featuring, naturally, Jason's distinctive artwork)

this will be limited to 33 signed copies; it is $33 US; again, overseas folks please contact me first.

people are welcome to reserve an artist copy, but please DO NOT send payment until I shoot you a confirmation email--the artist edition should be available by mid- to late- May at the latest.

thanks,
Blake

 

A Vacant Lot To Be In from Jason Zeh on Vimeo.

Cover Mounted

Back Cover

This is really interesting...

...to me at least.

At the risk of sounding like a douche, I wanted to say a little about my visual art and use the above images as a reference point. The first image is the artwork that I recently sent to the label that is putting out a cassette for me. I greatly respect that label as it has been going for quite some time and releases work by some truly inspiring artists. I was honored and humbled to have been asked to submit some work for this cassette series and, as is often the case with me, I took far too long to complete the audio. Then, it took me far longer to finish the art work. I struggled with a few ideas for the cover and finally decided on a concept that I thought was good. I executed the idea that I had in mind and edited the image so that it should fit perfectly within the dimensions of a cassette case.

Anyone who has been following my visual art will have noticed that, over the last few years,  I have been breaking outside my standard black and white xerox art and have been straying away from the use of bold and often earthy tones into more garish pastels. Another stylistic change that I have undergone in the last year, specifically, is that I have been working on incorporating frames into my art. In the realm of record covers, this is a move that has been met with considerable confusion. Just about every time I send the art off to the label that is dealing with it, the response I get is something like, "do you want me to crop out the frame?"

I fully understand the confusion. We usually think of frames as being things that are used to present art. They are devices that identify visual space as art and cordon it off from the outside world. Because of the disruption of visual space caused by the frame, the abstract expressionists often rejected its use. It may have been a way of blurring the boundaries between the experience of art and that of other visual experiences. It may have been an attempt to separate that kind of painting from the pictorial associations of past art movements. It may have been an attempt to draw attention to the objecthood of a painting in contrast to its former role as mere depiction of something external to it.

With this understanding of the frame in mind, it makes sense that people would be unwilling to easily accept a frame as part of the artwork for an album cover. But that is why I first started using it. Years ago, when I first began trying to show my work in public, I started collecting odd frames to put the pieces in. Much later, I became interested in photographing xerox art in frames to cast them as three dimensional objects rather than as flat designs.

Another issue that came up in this work takes me back to the abstract expressionists, specifically Robert Motherwell. A few years ago, I was reading his collected writings and became very interested in a series that he referred to as "opens." I was lucky enough to see one in person in Grand Rapids MI (it wasn't my favorite, but was pretty cool nonetheless). These pieces are characterized by very large expanses of one color (there might be some with more than one color though) and very simple lines that start to outline a geometric shape, but then intersect the outside edge of the canvas. The result is an implied form that continues outside of the visual field and kind of opens the canvas up to continue out into the rest of the world. This idea was really interesting to me and its influence started to work its way into my work.

When I came up with the idea for this record cover, I think I pushed my ideas about what I was doing with frames a step further than I was able to achieve before. In the first image, you can see that the bottom edge of the frame is cut off. I intentionally did it that way because the bottom black line of the xerox art is supposed to function as a stand in for that fourth wall of the frame. The whole idea of that piece is an interaction between the image and the frame so that they both work together to complete the rectangle. The result, for me at least, is that, like Motherwell's "opens" the piece opens the cover of the tape out into the world by implying a continuation of the image outside of what is visible. But, more importantly, it sets up a dialogue between the xerox art and the frame. The frame is trying to contain the image, but it is unable to do so because the bottom of it is cut off. As a result, the xerox art piece (which is rectangular, like a frame) steps in to close off the image at the bottom. At the same time, the top, left corner of the image is left open. Therefore, it relies on frame to keep everything closed up nicely. Because the xerox and the frame both need each other to box everything in, it becomes obvious that the function of the frame has been radically transformed. It is part of the image rather than external to it.

If you look at the actual, proposed, cover art, the bottom of the frame has been photoshopped back into place. Now it is just a frame again. The art is the thing inside the frame. The frame is not part of the art. There is no reason to think about the purpose of the frame on the cover.

If the cover goes to print like this, we will all survive. There is no big problem. It just provided a really amusing opportunity for self indulgent thinking: maybe one that is only amusing to me.

Printed Covers

Coming Soon

On Banned Productions

A Vacant Lot To Be In

A Vacant Lot To Be In

A Vacant Lot To Be In minus sleeves

Brombron16: Dots

I have more copies of my collaborative CD with Ben Gwilliam. Here is the CWNM review of the CD.

Partial Sound and Visual Art Portfolio