Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands
by James Hoff

Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands is an autobiographical record, comprised of four songs that Hoff refers to as ambient media. Each track is composed from sources drawn from his own involuntary aural landscape, specifically musical earworms and tinnitus frequencies.

Neither sound nor a daydream, the earworm (or stuck song) emblematizes music as a commercial form—immediate, ubiquitous, and persistent. Likewise, tinnitus is inaudible and unscrupulous, manifesting across a spectrum of frequencies at will. The cognitive swirling of these phenomena provides an ambivalent, internal soundtrack that scores a person’s movement through the world.

Those suffering from tinnitus or those who have grown accustomed to the “Tinnitus Effect” in movies will likely recognize the buzzing pitches on the record, but will likely not recognize the songs. Distorted and distilled, Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands features altered versions of four commercial pop songs: Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” Madonna’s “Into the Groove,” and Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

Having been haunted by these songs on and off for years, Hoff tweaks the tracks, transposing and recomposing them for orchestral instrumentation. Speaking back to these involuntary echoes, these tracks go to great lengths to obfuscate their sources; to be sure not to simply re-introduce each earworm, as though they were samples. Otherwise, what’s the point? No one needs another stream.

Besides, earworms are not music, although we perceive them as such. They are non-cochlear and exist as an affective force that is neither subjective nor objective, which is to say they are an invasive—and alien—phenomenon. Like tinnitus, they are aggravated by economic, social, and environmental forces as well as emotional states, mental health, and aging. Hoff doesn’t underplay his own struggles with mental health in discussing the record—noting a long history of depression and its acuteness over the last few years, which serve as the backdrop to the composition of this record.

Scratch any pop song hard enough and you’ll find sadness underneath it. Subdermal, the songs on this record evoke a type of ephemeral weariness and despair. By recasting the original songs through their shadowy doubles, Hoff provides a window into the dark core of pop music. At the center of which lies capitalism’s desperate attempt to replicate itself through a cheap high built on echoing refrains. Just below the surface the listener finds a hangover of shadows dancing through the mind.

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James Hoff is an artist living and working in New York. He has exhibited and performed internationally. He co-founded Primary Information in 2006 to publish historical and contemporary artists’ books.

JAMES HOFF 'Everything You Want Less Time' (SP151)

The musical score [Instruction]

Water drops dropped into the three glasses at different rates.
Glass1 - 210 dripping/1min - 300cc
Glass2 - 340 dripping/1min - 300cc
Glass3 - 140 dripping/1min - 300cc

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Droplets of water are set to drip from three infusion containers suspended from the ceiling, each at a different speed.
Each of the three players produce sound by rubbing with their fingers a wine glass that catches the droplets from one of the containers, with the scale changing according to the amount of water that accumulates.
The first track [Stand by doing nothing] documents this process for ten minutes, during which the players continuously watched the water droplets fall.
The second track [Far from doing nothing] documents the players continually rubbing the glasses until the water dripping is complete.
Both tracks make audible how the level of 300cc water gradually shifts.
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Composed by Takahiro Kawaguchi.
Performed by Shinjiro Yamaguchi, Satoshi Kanda, Kanako Kawaguchi and Takahiro Kawaguchi.
Recorded by Takahiro Kawaguchi at eitoeiko and home studio, September 26 and 28, 2020.

imm005 01 Stand by doing nothing | Intro [3 minutes] | from Three Glasses by Takahiro Kawaguchi

By immeasurable

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