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.
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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.
"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
• Show Bio for Chester Hawkins "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." ^ Hide Bio for Chester Hawkins
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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
Electro-Acoustic
Sound, Noise, &c.
Electronica
Guitarists, &c.
Piano & Keyboards
Electronic Forms
Field Recordings
Solo Artist Recordings
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Intangible Arts.
 | 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. | |
 | 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. | |
 | Alva Noto This Stolen Country of Mine (Noton) |
| The soundtrack to the 2022 German documentary film This Stolen Country of Mine directed by German filmmaker Marc Wiese about Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists opposed to the sale of the country's resources to Chinese investors, in 19 subtle, elegantly passionate electronic works from sound artist Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto. | |
 | 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. | |
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 | 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. | |
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 | 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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| 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. | |
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