The four tracks that comprise Giving Water to the Dead were composed using sound materials originally recorded for the sound installation Histories of the Present, a public artwork commissioned by the City of Berkeley in 2019. But where the installation was about a melding of practices and sounds into a single gesture, Crouch and Novak wanted to take the opportunity of a split release to exploring divergent paths starting from common ground. For Giving Water to the Dead, each artist started with the same source material and plotted their own direction without direct influence from the other. As artists in a relationship and sharing a studio this was no easy feat. Despite the planned divergence the resulting tracks compliment each other, as the artists do.
Track Listing
A1. Robert Takahashi Crouch – A Determination of Salt Water Drowning
A2. Robert Takahashi Crouch – Like A Shipwreck We Die Going Into Ourselves
B1. Yann Novak – Our Bodies Stirred These Waters Briefly Pt. 1
B2. Yann Novak – Our Bodies Stirred These Waters Briefly Pt. 2
Credits
- Drawing by Dorian Wood.
- Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space.
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[01]
Headphone Commute’s Best of 2022: Music For Sonic Installations In The Cavern Of Your Skull
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[02]
Robert Takahashi Crouch and Yann Novak team up to release a 40-minute cassette split for a UK-based Tapeworm imprint. Fans of deconstructed minimal ambience sprinkled with noise, distortion and bass, will immediately find themselves bathing in all of its glorious textures. The mastering touch of Lawrence English only increases the warmth of the sonics, leaving the rest as it should be in place: ghostly sounds swooshing between the two channels, percolating through filtered surfaces, like a slowly-melting grainy film, about to reveal its analogue story, and then suddenly catching on fire to perish away. The split of four pieces unites them by the source material, which may be something orchestral, maybe symphonic (is that an organ in the forefront or the strings?). Through the mysterious chain of post-processing, the duo manages to force out a new life for these pieces, always mutating, and never standing still. I am especially partial to Novak’s use of bass, on what appears to be his more organic work here. This all started with a public artwork commissioned by the City of Berkley in 2019, for which the duo was commissioned to create a sound installation. “But where the installation was about a melding of practices and sounds into a single gesture, Crouch and Novak wanted to take the opportunity of a split release to explore divergent paths starting from common ground.” Conceptual approaches aside, this is an enormous release in the miniature, saturated with wavering frequencies that seem to resonate with the dead and beyond. Loud volumes are recommended!
— Headphone Commute -
[03]
From the video premiere of “Our Bodies Stirred These Waters Briefly Pt. 1” on Foxy Digitalis:
Kudos to The Tapeworm for pairing LA power couple Yann Novak and Robert Takahashi Crouch on this new split tape, Giving Water to the Dead. Novak and Crouch create some of the most engaging, emotionally-dense music around. They started with the same source material for this split but went on their own sonic treks. Each side is its own statement, but they work together as a cohesive, complementary whole, digging through similar maritime terrain with unique perspectives.
In the Steven Miller-directed video for Novak’s “Our Bodies Stirred These Waters Briefly Pt. 1,” fluid movement and underwater spectacle heighten the expansive nature of the sounds. Drones rise and fall bathed in soft distortion, accentuated by crystalline arrows. Novak pushes the wave forward, pressing through the imposing geometry cast by the reflective imagery of the video. Bass tones glow white-hot, drawing furtive glances from above the surface where light has already begun to fade.
— Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis
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