Squidco: Hawkins, Chester: Apsis

Apsis

Recorded while on tour in Arizona, Denmark, and Sweden, experimental composer Chester Hawkins transforms keyboards, live loops, field recordings, synths, lapsteel, and music box into immersive and hallucinatory soundscapes, weaving tense, meditative, and otherworldly excursions that trace the shifting orbits of inner and outer space in vivid, exploratory detail.

Price: $12.95

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-AzzamBells MP019, keyboards, live loops & field recording treatments, synths, lapsteel guitar, drummer emulation programming, music box

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

Cover and interior art: Intervention #3 (plate glass, acetate, gelatin, sky) by Hawkins 2024. Audio mastering by Vitória Régia Studios

Label: Intangible Arts
Catalog ID: IA032
Squidco Product Code: 36653

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2025
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack - 3 panel

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Highlights of a recent tour recorded in Arizona, Denmark, and Sweden. Here, excerpts can be heard from performances recorded at Tucson's "Golden Saguaro" venue, Geiger's Aprilfest in Gothenburg, the artspace Amok in Aarhus, and the gloriously crypt-like UnderWerket in Copenhagen. These gigs were immersive, tense, meditative, and hallucinatory excursions into deepest inner-space. APSIS may be the final release under the Hawkins name, as a new project is bubbling up from .. somewhere .."-Intangible Arts

"Chester Hawkins is an American graphic designer and art director. Apsis is 6 tracks: 3 called "Perihelion" and 3 called "Aphelion". An Apsis is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. Perihelion is the point where a planet is closest to the Sun, while Aphelion is the point where it is farthest from the Sun. These tracks are highlights of a recent tour recorded in Arizona, Denmark, and Sweden. These tracks are immersive, tense, meditative, and hallucinatory excursions into deepest inner-space, or maybe it's outer space. AArbor"-KFJC

Cover and interior art: Intervention #3 (plate glass, acetate, gelatin, sky) by Hawkins 2024. Audio mastering by Vitória Régia Studios

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."

-Chester Hawkins 11/19/2025

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

^ Hide Bio for Chester Hawkins

Track Listing:

1. Aphelion.1 9:30

2. Perihelion.1 5:01

3. Perihelion.2 5:49

4. Perihelion.3 7:30

5. Aphelion.2 11:53

6. Aphelion.3 5:29

Recommended & Related Releases:

CHANGES TO blind (Phil Zampino)
Volume 9 - I Wave on a Fine Vile Mist [CD + DOWNLOAD]
(Squidco)

The ninth and first concept album from Phil Zampino's CHANGES TO blind project, composed from synthetics, samples, field recordings, plunders, and voice, draws on a childhood 10" circus record to explore life's strange loop through sonic experimentation, collage, and poetry-blurring memory, absurdity, and existential inquiry in a deeply personal, carousel-like narrative.

CHANGES TO blind
Volume Eight: Before Birth to Expiration9
(Squidco Records)

The eighth album from the long-running CHANGES TO blind project of Phil Zampino, eight works drawing on compositions & improvisations, acoustic & synthetic instruments, field recordings & samples, with guests Levi Erik providing field recordings & voice and Wilmington, NC's 910 Noise Members of Carl Kruger, subterrene, John Bishop, Authorless and Ryan Lewis.

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.

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.

CHANGES TO blind
evolvensume
(Squidco Records)

Collecting works from 2010-2017, Squidco's own Phil Zampino presents 10 tracks of electroacoustic composition sourced from studio work, live improvisation, field recordings, plunderphonics, and other indescribable approaches, a diverse set of recordings sharing a similar foreboding aesthetic and curious sonic desire.

Various Artists
910 Noise Presents
(910 Noise)

A compilation of sound artists within the 910 area code, the North Carolina coastal region including Wilmington, NC, the home of Squidco, with artists including Carl Kruger (Caucasians, Baby Daddy), Grant Stewart as subterrene, Ryan Lewis in Food World and Baby Daddy, Phil Zampino (CHANGES TO blind), Jason Ward, August Traeger, and Authorless.

Mr. Stonecipher
The Fleeting EP
(910 Noise)

The solo harsh dream sound project of media and sound artist Ryan Lewis, delving deep into his childhood traumas through sound, which he developed as an outlet and meditative release for the artist using sound.

Mr. Stonecipher Vs. Somnaphon
The Horsemaster's Daughter [CASSETTE]
(910 Noise)

A cassette release joining 910 Noise and Ack Recordings from Ryan Lewis and August Traeger, harsh American noise that "will destroy the speakers" (Feast of Hate and Fear).

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.

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.

CHANGES TO blind
Volume 4: Phobia
(Mucal)