Madison, WI's Joel Shanahan, who makes music under the moniker of Golden Donna, just launched a new experimental label called Signal Dreams that puts out limited CD editions of recording projects centered on process. His highly avant-garde roster digs into, for example, tape manipulation, modular synthesizer sound-design, and a wide array of computer-based techniques. His two upcoming February releases include a series of conceptual pieces called Survey of a Broken Tape Recorder, made on none other than an actual broken tape recorder. It's the work of Chicago-based violinist Troy Schafer, whose first piece in the series of “I,” “II,” and “III,” is a 13-minute sound odyssey into the sublime that, for some, may cause residual brain pulsations. There are subtle phase shifts within the piece, as it moves from jarringly unlistenable, to outright stunning, culminating in a crisp tape recorder button-press sound effect that pulls you back into reality, just before throwing you into the next entrancing segment.
Stream “I' below, and catch the whole thing when it comes out on February 1, via Signal Dreams.
