The Squid's Ear Magazine


Chase, Brian / Andrea Parkins: Avalanche of Routes (Confront)

The NY duo of accordionist Andrea Parkins, using self-designed virtual instruments, field recordings, everyday objects and small instruments, and drummer Brian Chase, applying guitar pedals to his percussion, create fascinating sculpted works of electroacoustic improvisation.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Andrea Parkins-accordion, electronics, amplified objects, live processing

Brian Chase-drums, electronics


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




Label: Confront
Catalog ID: ccs 67
Squidco Product Code: 22688

Format: CDR
Condition: New
Released: 2016
Country: UK
Packaging: Cardboard Sleeve Sealed
Recorded at Hidden Quarry, in Woodstock, New York, in February, 2014 by Danny Blume.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"The duo of electroacoustic instrumentalist Andrea Parkins and drummer Brian Chase has its beginnings in the clubs of Brooklyn, NY, 2013. Parkins and Chase each bring to this project their distinct and distinguished histories as active members on the New York experimental scene. As collaborators, they emphasize the focused merging of improvisation and composition: a dedicated exploration of the "complicated relationship" between the act of spontaneous creation and honing of precise form within context.

In addition to being strong acoustic instrumentalists - Parkins on accordion and Chase on drum kit - the duo shares a love for electroacoustic music and its methodologies: Parkins employs her self-designed virtual instruments to transform her materials (field recordings, everyday objects and small instruments) into zones of sculpted electronic feedback, punctuated by gaps and rifts; Chase's use of guitar pedals on drums and percussion manifests these instruments' under-heard acoustic subtleties.

For their debut album, Avalanche of Routes, the duo spent two days recording in a home studio in Woodstock, NY in snowy February 2014. They found that the music took on a surprisingly noir-like quality: each track is suggestive of an equivocal scene and character; the tonal imagery is very rich in its depth of imagination; the thematic material unfolds at the whims of (non)reactionary pushes and pulls; their sonic language covers broad ground as even the slightest sound can serve as an object of fascination."-Confront


Artist Biographies

"Andrea Parkins is an American composer, sound artist, performer and improvisational musician based in New York. She is known for her inventive explorations on the electric accordion, generative sound processing, and arrangements of objects and sound. Parkins received a BFA from Tufts University and MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.

Andrea Parkins's work is influenced by the compositional strategies of John Cage and Fluxus and pays homage to musique concrète and 1970s analog synth. Parkins often incorporates electronically processed accordion, customized sound processing, live tape manipulation, analog effects boxes, laptop electronics, acoustic piano, sampling, and amplified objects. Her method and sound were characterized by LA Weekly as: "The big, varied, confidently conceived abstractions Parkins yanks from her squeezebox, laptop, effects devices and maybe piano - cloudy and cranky one minute, surgically sharp the next." With an unconventional approach to instruments, Parkins "fragments the instrument's traditional vocabulary and expands its capabilities with electronics and extended techniques."

Recently Andrea Parkins has been developing a series of interactive sound and image works inspired by the structures of Rube Goldberg's circuitous machines. Describing this organizational approach Stephen Bezan remarked: "the individual sounds manipulated by Parkins seem to interact and influence the outcome of the other, crafting a goal-oriented structure based on timbre, not harmony or rhythm. This approach transcends the inherent cacophony of the material and reveals a genuinely organic, even playful quality to her work." Parkins has described her Rube Goldberg approach as a means for examining slippages between object and meaning. She observed: "An important conceptual thread running through these pieces is the discovery and expression of metaphors for the slippage and tension between object and meaning that occurs through the passage of time." Describing her intentions, Parkins noted: "As both a sonic and visual artist, I try to build and layer idiosyncratic systems and structures that point to these shifts in meaning."

Andrea Parkins has toured and exhibited internationally and has been presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, Experimental Intermedia, and Diapason Gallery for Sound and Intermedia. She has collaborated with musicians such as Nels Cline, Jim Black, Ellery Eskelin, David Watson, David Fenech, Fred Frith, Thomas Lehn, Günter Müller, and Otomo Yoshihide and choreographers Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad from the BodyCartography Project. Parkins has been the recipient of various grants, awards, and residencies including Meet the Composer, New York State Council for the Arts, Harvestworks Media Art Center, in New York City, Frei und Hanseastadt Hamburg Kulturbehoerde, in Germany, and CESTA in the Czech Republic."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Parkins)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.



Selected Discography:

Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Drums and Drones
w/ The Seconds
w/ Alan Licht
w/ Peter Aaron
w/ Collapsible Shoulder
w/ Thollem McDonas
w/ Seth Misterka:
w/ Jeremiah Cymerman
w/ Man Forever
w/ Karlie Bruce
w/ Fretless Brothers
w/ Sway Machinery
w/ Tyondai Braxton

-Brian Chase Website (http://www.chasebrian.com/recordings/)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Dream Of Houses 4:41

2. Knock Paws 3:41

3. The Light And The Street 3:34

4. Etched Wagon 4:47

5. Irrational Enclave 5:17

6. Avalanche Of Routes 6:34

7. Breaking Curios 3:45

8. Slide Into After 5:05

9. Smoke Becomes Object 5:50

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Duo Recordings
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Objects and Home-made Instruments

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Confront.


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