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Cody Drasser / Matriarch PWD10

by peacockwindowrecordings

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Anticipating Nowhere Records
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Mac
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/
1.
Matriarch I 04:26
2.
Matriarch II 03:24
3.
Matriarch III 02:08
4.
Matriarch IV 02:28
5.
Matriarch V 02:56
6.
Matriarch VI 02:36
7.
Matriarch VII 02:58
8.
Matriarch VIII 02:30
9.
Matriarch IX 04:15
10.
Matriarch X 03:59
11.
Matriarch XI 02:59
12.
Matriarch XII 02:57
13.
Matriarch XIII 07:38
14.
Matriarch XIV 05:59
15.
Matriarch XV 05:48

about

This album is a sonic tribute dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Carolyn W. Brown, who passed away on October 23rd, 2018 at the age of ninety-seven. A loving, caring and creative person, she always supported me from a young age in all of my endeavors whether they were artistic, musical or academic. I am forever grateful and eternally indebted to her for all that she was able to do for me in this lifetime. She will be greatly missed by me, and all who had the good fortune to know her.

Aside from some of my own additions to each track (very discrete and subtle tones and textures to add a bit more body), every sound found within each and every moment of these songs is my grandmother singing and/or playing piano. The source material for this album came from a brief, rough recording my stepfather did of my grandmother tinkering on the piano a few years before her passing. (That one recording is also likely to have been the last time my grandmother was ever able to sit at a piano and play and vocalize.) That source material, though only about 15 minutes in length, was a veritable goldmine of sonic material that I mined for its most interesting and engaging parts.

Gathering bits and pieces of my grandmother singing and playing piano from this source material, I began to build up a small library of short loops and snippets that I could then assemble into a layered network of sounds, tones, melody and noise. Each piece was created in a live, unscripted setting without overdubs, any auditory maps to guide the process or preconceived notions of what things should sound like. A very basic pedal board setup was used along with a computer-recording program to manipulate, merge and mold these sounds into free flowing auditory configurations.

Many sessions and about 2+ hours of material later, I had what I believed was the basis of an album (or two), and set about to work on culling the most listenable and engaging moments from the “Matriarch” recording sessions into basic song structures that were pleasing to me. Once that work was completed, I began to add small fragments of textural ambience to create even more depth and dimension but was careful not to add too much. I really wanted my grandmother's playing and singing to be the focus of the album, almost as if she had made it herself had she been interested and/or aware of experimental ambient sounds.

Although I could have easily done much more with the material and spent a lot more time with it, I left it sparse in areas and tried to keep the creative process spontaneous and fresh. I tend to get bogged down in my own convoluted processes and wanted to work differently this time around, seeing if I could work quickly and effortlessly while still conjuring up sounds that pleased me. I felt that putting out this album somewhat relatively close to my grandmother's passing would be the best thing to do instead of sitting on it for months, or even years.

The end result is 15 songs that are almost completely based off of that one source material recording of my grandmother. Though the album could mostly be labeled under the umbrella term “ambient”, simply calling it that would be a disservice to the material. The material on “Matriarch” covers a large swath of musical territory and moves freely from one style to another, rarely settling on one style for too long in an effort to avoid stagnation and redundancy. In addition to the aforementioned ambient tag, the album dives deeply into areas of isolationist dark ambient, ethereal noise, understated and ominous power electronics, repetitive loops and hypnotic drone.

credits

released January 1, 2019

Carolyn Brown - Source material (voice and piano)
Cody Drasser - Source material manipulation/editing, additional sounds and artwork
William Clune - Original source material recording
John Stillings - Mastering

license

all rights reserved

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about

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peacockwindowrecordings New York

Peacock Window Recordings. Long Island, NY.

Weird, dark, spacey, experimental, ominous and beautiful sounds. Interested in experimental music that strays from the usual scripts and stereotypes.

Predominantly digital releases with the occasional physical edition.

Main home to Caulbearer (Cody Drasser & Ben Roe, Jr.). ... more

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