The Squid's Ear Magazine


nil.: 01 (Intangible Arts)

Restarting his sonic life at "nothing", Chester Hawkins' new project after work under his own name and his previous decades-long project Blue Sausage Infant is nil, recording after a two-week residency at Liebig12 in Berlin and participation in the Zero Cohesion program, this five-part work for "maximal drone" explores complex harmonics in a dynamic and powerful wall of sound.
 

Price: $11.95



Quantity:

In Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 3.00 units

Sample The Album:





product information:

Personnel:



Chester Hawkins-composer, performer


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




Label: Intangible Arts
Catalog ID: IA029
Squidco Product Code: 33257

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2023
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack - 3 panel
Recorded in Berlin, Germany, in June, 2022.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"01 is a summary report following a two-week residency at Liebig12 in Berlin. nil. was present as part of the Zero Cohesion program, which occupied the space throughout June 2022. The procedures documented here incorporate studio recordings made on site and modified street recordings from east Berlin and elsewhere. The June 29 procedure was open to the public for research purposes. Sounds, mix, photography, and package design by Chester Hawkins. Audio mastering by Mark Beazley, Trace Recordings, United Kingdom.



Chester Hawkins (Baltimore USA) began musical activities in the 1980s cassette underground, creating a personal form of junkyard dada psychedelia and ritual noise. His Blue Sausage Infant project started in Washington DC as an exercise in musique concrète and abstract electronics, later expanding to embrace Berlin-school kosmische- musik and sound design. Live performances ranged from anarchic improvised actions to densely composed works, leaving audiences from DC to Paris in a variety of profoundly altered states...

Hawkins retired BSI in 2013 and continued under his own name in an avant-classical direction with cinematic surrealism and highly narrative soundworks. Using an arsenal of electronics and modified acoustic objects, the aim was to tease the brain with a delicate balance of pastoral dreamscapes and paranoid tension.

nil.began in March 2022 as a move towards maximal drone and strong simplicity, exploring complex harmonics in a dynamic and powerful wall of sound. nil. material is presented without clues to the motives behind it. All works are named for the date of completion and all releases share the same cover panel, free from artwork that would suggest any intention. Context is not necessary here. nil. is an attempt to create potent sound without ego, time, structure, or agenda.

Hawkins has provided soundtrack music for feature-length independent films Pale Trees (2018), The Gospel According to Bart (2014), and Surface to Air (2010), as well as the short films Apostasy (2018, dir. H. Paul Moon) and This is Ellen (2013, dir. John Salcido).


Artist Biographies

"Chester Hawkins (Washington DC) has performed a wide range of experimental music since 1985. His most well-known project was BLUE SAUSAGE INFANT, being an exercise in musique concrète and loop-collage, which later expanded to embrace drone, krautrock, psychedelia, noise, and sonically intense live performances. After 28 years, the BSI project was retired and new works continue under his own name, crafting dynamic adventures in sound with a more focused and wholly electronic approach.

Hawkins has released music under the imprints Alrealon Musique, Zeromoon, and his own Intangible Arts. Past collaborators include Insect Factory, Violet, Tag Cloud, Haunted Toilet, Changes to Blind, New Carrollton, Lida Husik, and Stolen Government Binder Clip."

-Chester Hawkins 10/2/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. 0622.7 4:40

2. 0622.5 8:12

3. 0622.6 7:10

4. 0622.4 7:12

5. 0622.3 13:55

Related Categories of Interest:


Electro-Acoustic
Sound, Noise, &c.
Electronica
Guitarists, &c.
Piano & Keyboards
Electronic Forms
Field Recordings
Solo Artist Recordings
Staff Picks & Recommended Items
New in Experimental & Electronic Music

Search for other titles on the label:
Intangible Arts.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Hawkins, Chester
Magnetisk Nord
(Intangible Arts)
Chester Hawkins' curiosity for Denmark resulted in his renting an apartment in central Kobenhavn, bringing along his electronically modified lapsteel guitar, wind and reed instruments, tabletop noise-boxes, mobile synthesizer apps and a shortwave radio, which he joined with field recordings from the capital region, creating this magnificent loveletter to Denmark.
Hawkins, Chester
Natural Causes - Original Music For Pale Trees, A Film By Tim Ashby [VINYL]
(Intangible Arts)
Washington, DC based electronic experimenter Chester Hawkins (Blue Sausage Infant) was commissioned by director Tim Ashby to compose this work for the soundtrack to his feature-length film "Pale Trees", Hawkin's music illustrating the film's gradient of psychological colors from darkness, rage, and vengeance through a mix of kosmische drone in a Tangerine Dream vein.
CHANGES TO blind + Blue Sausage Infant

(Intangible Arts)
Blue Sausage Infant and CHANGES TO blind met in 1992 for these improvised studio recordings, and to perform CTb's sonic tour of a house live at Troy, NY's Last Exit.
Other Recommended Releases:
Merzbow
Cafe OTO [2 CDs]
(Cold Spring Records)
A live and extended performance of brutal but shifting sonic assault performed before an appreciative audience at London's Cafe OTO in 2016, a solo performance from Japanese noise legend Masami Akita, AKA Merzbow, each of the 2 CDs in this set more than 50 minutes of tightly controlled electronic mayhem from the unremitting determination of one of the globe's masters of noise.
Myers, David Lee
Logos in Aeon
(pulsewidth)
Sonic explorer and feedback pioneer David Lee Myers in a collection of eight pensive electronic ambience works recorded at Pulsewidth in the spring of 2022, meditating on the mysteries of time and eternity through Apophis, a demon serpent of darkness whom Ra, as sun god, destroys every morning at dawn.
Arcane Device
N28: Ohmniscient
(pulsewidth)
The second of NY electronic explorer David Lee Myers', aka Arcane Device, N28 series, an album of excited electronics, field recordings, inexplicable sound and rotating, splintering and otherwise lovingly mangled sound, not so much a noise collection as instead a controlled chaos with moments of cavernous beauty in a journey of mercurial rummaging.
Merzbow / Arcane Device
Merzbow & Arcane Device
(Important Records)
Two innovative sonic luminaries--Japan's Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, and New York City's David Lee Myers, aka Arcane Device--remix each other's work, bringing Myer's unique approach to feedback and ethereal electronics to harness Akita's agressive sounds, and in reverse, Akita's sense of disruptive sonics explode Myer's more contemplative feedback music.
Arcane Device
Circuit Dreams
(pulsewidth)
Using a combination of controlled feedback, samples, computer processing and Eurorack electronics, Arcane Device aka David Lee Myers continues his long exploration of electronic music, focusing here on evolving and complex patterns complemented by beautiful tones and occasional rhythmic foundations, a great collection of elegant electronics.
Ohta, Takamitsu
Three Relations Among The Flock [CASSETTE]
(Winds Measure)
Takamitsu Ohta, known for his work with artists Anne-F Jacques & Ryoko Akama, in three unexpected recordings using the microphone and speaker of small devices with recording and playback ability, from five to fifteen such linked devices creating surprisingly stacatto and expressive voices from feedback, each piece aptly named for the resulting articulation each combination creates.
Hawkins, Chester
Cops Need Serial Numbers [USB mp3 & wav + pdf]
(Intangible Arts)
DC electronic explorer Chester Hawkins releases this limited edition album of 50 copies shaped in a metal bullet that unscrews to reveal a USB drive with more than 4 hours of extended forays into psychedelic electronics, synth and tabletop guitar, journeys of hard drone & abstract concrete elements, in mp3 & wav format with a pdf, housed in a handsome black case.
Hawkins, Chester
Metabolism Quartet / Nocturne For Poppy [CASSETTE]
(Zeromoon/ Intangible Arts)
Electro-psychedelic explorer Chester Hawkins presenting two live performances in Washington DC -- one recorded in isolation at Intangible Arts' studio (4th September 2018) and one in public at Rhizome community arts space (8th September 2018) -- improvised autopsies of Lutoslawski's String Quartet by means of three granular synth engines and one tape-edit/concrete emulator.
Hawkins, Chester
K516156/91044 [33 1/3 7-inch VINYL]
(Intangible Arts)
A 33 rpm 7" from Washington, DC sound artist Chester Hawkins, which "contains highly concentrated extracts" of two remixes of live recordings at Logan Fringe Arts Space and Red Onion Records, from his limited-edition USB release "Cops Need Serial Numbers"; mesmerizing and hypnotic electronics from a masterful performer and kosmiche explorer.
Hawkins, Chester
Magnetisk Nord
(Intangible Arts)
Chester Hawkins' curiosity for Denmark resulted in his renting an apartment in central Kobenhavn, bringing along his electronically modified lapsteel guitar, wind and reed instruments, tabletop noise-boxes, mobile synthesizer apps and a shortwave radio, which he joined with field recordings from the capital region, creating this magnificent loveletter to Denmark.
Blue Sausage Infant
Flight of the Solstice Queens
(Zeromoon)
Chester Hawkins' long-running BSI project now based in DC, layering groove based (kraut)rock with unearthly sound sources, plundered samples, and all form of unmentionable sound.
Blue Sausage Infant
Scalpels for the Animal God
(Intangible Arts)
The live sound of Blue Sausage Infant, ranging from brutalist noise to textured drones, pounding neo-tribalism, krautrock-flavored psychedelia, or cut-ups of cultural artifacts.



Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought:
Hex and Doravideo
Multi
(Wetware)
The core duo of Danish trance/noise artists, guitarist Lars Bech Pilgaard also on organelle & driftbox, and drummer Anders Bach, also on plumbutter (a drum and drama machine) join with Acid Mother's Temple modular synth wizard Ichiraku Yoshimitsu, aka Dora Video, for eight impressive works of free-form rhythm and sound, sonic collage with far-ranging influences.
Skumsnes Moe, Guro / Philippe Petit
Guro Skumsnes Moe & Philippe Petit
(Public Eyesore)
Bringing together two noise improvisers and experimenters, Guro Skumsnes Moe from Sult and MoE performing on octabass & electric bass, and Philippe Petit (who has albums on Aural Terrains, Monotype and Bolt) performing on synthesizer and turntables, both also providing vocal utterance, for two thick journeys of twisted, diverse and often deep sonics bridged by an abstract interlude.
Playbackers (Silbert / Foam / Young)
Playbackers Record [CASSETTE + DOWNLOAD]
(Tripticks Tapes)
Recording to 4 track cassette, this unusual and experimental Boston-area trio of active sound artists--Stella Silbert, Arkm Foam and Neil 'Cloaca' Young--improvise over abstract territory using turntables, a no-input mixer, objects, an open reel tape machine, contact mics, and cassette players, emerging with equally tongue-in-cheek and serious aural interactions.
Crane, Laurence
Natural World
(Another Timbre)
A work for voice, piano and electronics from experimental composer Laurence Crane, working with the closely associated UK ensemble Apartment House, Natural World is in three sections--"Field Guide", "Chorus" and "Seascape"--with vocalist Juliet Fraser and pianist & electronic artist Mark Knoop, Crane's work describing the natural world and portending the fragility of our ecosystems.
Thomas, Pat / Chris Sharkey / Luke Reddin-Williams
Know : Delirium Atom Paths
(577 Records)
Energetic, authoritative and unpredictable, this 2020 concert at Hyde Park Book club, in Leeds, UK from the collective free improv trio of Pat Thomas on keyboards, Chris Sharkey on electric guitar and Luke Reddin on Williams on drums, burns through an extended and far-ranging set of sonic environments and seriously exhilarating straight-on playing.
Wong, Theresa
Practicing Sands
(fo'c'sle)
A series of instrumental pieces and songs from Chinese-American composer, cellist, and vocalist Theresa Wong, inspired by the sounds of the natural world and a personal sense of "sonic genetic memory", her works merging composition and improvisation, the album recorded by Wong herself using specific microphone placement to bring out the warmth of her instrument and voice.
Wolfarth, Christian
39 / Part I - III
(Hiddenbell Records)
39 tracks make up this compelling 3-part solo percussion work from Swiss improviser and composer Christian Wolfarth, using a game approach where some sequences are determined by the roll of a dice for note values, rest and tempo, Wolfarth performing on dead wood, a drum or 39 pine cones, augmented with recordings of stones, water, footsteps, church bells, &c.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC