SITE/SOUND is curated by Laumeier Sculpture Park’s 2012 in-residence-composer, Eric Hall who has invited regional musicians, bands, sound artists and producers to contribute to and assist him with a massive collaborative art experience. Each artist and/or band has created an aural portrait of one of Laumeier’s permanent collection sculptures either as a reaction to, in conversation with or an extension of the work via the medium of sound.

SCULPTURE:
Frances Whitehead          
Hortus Obscurus (The Dark Garden), 1997
23 varieties of plants, two limestone benches, iron border
"Frances Whitehead is an amateur botanist and natural scientist, turning plants and the practices of topiary into art. Her work Hortus Obscurus (The Dark Garden), 1997, builds associations with evil, the sinister and the funereal using seduction as a didactic tool. Hidden in a nook of the Museum Lawn, this work is intended to be a surprising display–a living garden with an atypical view of nature that is most often associated with “greenness” rather than “darkness.”
             This installation is an encyclopedic collection of the darkest varieties of many well-known and some lesser known plant varieties. Whitehead has designed the antithesis of a typical garden by selecting trees and plants with black, purple and brown flowers and foliage, with a contrived and mannered staging. An ecological statement, calling for a greater awareness of the botanical world, this provocative garden installation is complete with a set of stone benches, inviting the visitor to contemplate the future of our natural world."


SOUND:
N.N.N. Cook 
Grotesque Teem (For Hortus Obscurus), 2012
"An absurd collage of avian song to accompany an atypical garden; this composition consists of 29 unique North American bird vocalizations selected for their peculiar timbre and cadence. Instead of the bright and cheerful chirping we are accustomed to these birds cackle, growl, screech and wail like a maniacal chorus of winged beasts echoing from the shadows. By choosing sounds associated with the botanical world for their unfamiliar qualities and arranging them in a strange and somewhat unsettling manner this piece formally mirrors Whitehead’s approach. It does this while emphasizing the symbiotic and delicate relationships of the natural world thus reinforcing the initial purpose and method of the sculpture."


Grotesque Teem (For Hortus Obscurus)

The album Lead & Coal: A Sounding, is one part of a larger, eponymous sound art and critical spatial practice project by NNN Cook, Nokosee Fields, Gavin Kroeber, Josh Levi and Aaron Owens, exploring mining landscapes in St. Louis’ constitutive hinterlands: the Old Missouri Lead Belt and Southern Illinois Coal Belt. 


19th-century St. Louis could arguably be understood as an extractivist war machine: digging up coal from Illinois, melting lead from Missouri, producing armaments for the St. Louis Arsenal, and provisioning the genocidal military forces at Jefferson Barracks. Over the past year, artists NNN Cook, Nokosee Fields, Gavin Kroeber, Josh Levi, and Aaron Owens have been visiting these post-industrial territories and performing “soundings”—sonic experiments conducted on, in, at, with, and for the land. This album collects recordings from this artistic fieldwork.


NNN Cook — synthesizers, oscillators, ocarina, tapes, voice, field recordings
Nokosee Fields — violin, electronics, bowed towel rack, conch shell, voice
Josh Levi — synthesizers, electronics, tapes, voice, field recordings
Gavin Kroeber and Aaron Owens — research, landscape choreography, geomancy

Produced and mixed by Nathan Cook
Field recordings, engineering and additional sounds by Rick ‘Wiggpaw’ Wilson
Mastered by Maxwell Citron
Design by Nathan Cook
Photographs by Aaron Owens

Funding for Lead & Coal: A Sounding was provided by The Luminary’s Futures Fund, a regional regranting initiative made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship, a place-based, durational award dedicated to supporting visionary arts practitioners.

Close/Far Recordings | c/f 042 | MMXXV

Album sampler collage — Lead & Coal: A Sounding

NNN COOK ~888CALL888~
Excerpt of a 20-minute trance inducing track of electronic rumble inspired by daydreams of internet teleportation, corporeal rave sublimation, high-speed drives through desert mirages, and neo-platonic cyber mysticism.

From Wamhoda / NNN Cook Cassette split
Edition of 100 on chrome tape

Body Over Internet Protocol (Excerpt)[C/F 022]

One of the last contemporary recordings featuring Charles 'Bobo' Shaw the incredible St. Louis-based jazz drummer and founding member of Black Artists Group and Human Arts Ensemble. This was recorded in 2013 in St. Louis and includes Michael Loveman on keyboard and Josh Weinstein on bass. Sadly, Shaw passed away in January 2017. This was published in 2016 on Rhizomatic St. Louis Vol. 4 on Close/Far Recordings. More details here: www.close-far.com. Thanks to Josh Weinstein for his help releasing the recording. Cover art by Jeremy Kannapell.
"Three For One" (C. Shaw, M. Loveman)
Charles 'Bobo' Shaw - drums
Michael Loveman - keyboard, kaossilator
Josh Weinstein - bass
©2013 Music Forever International

Human Arts Trio (Featuring Charles 'Bobo' Shaw) - "Three For One" [from Rhizomatic Vol. 4] [C/F 031]

A track from the forthcoming fifth volume of the annually released compilation on Close/Far Recordings. A survey of regional experimental music featuring: sound art, free improvisation, avant-garde jazz, ambient, and electronic music from artists currently living in the St. Louis area.
Cover art by Jeremy Kannapell
Release date: March 30
www.close-far.com

Blank Thomas - Fight Me [from Rhizomatic St. Louis Vol. 5] [C/F 035]

Close/Far Recordings cassette edition:

Featuring commissioned studio works of new electronic and percussion pieces, recorded in 2016, utilizing Kyma, SeeSaw drumming, and modular synthesizer.

The multi facets of Rich O'Donnell span 60 years as virtuoso percussionist, improviser, composer, designer and builder of percussion and electronic instruments, teacher and writer. He is director of the Electronic Music Studio at Washington University in St. Louis, and co-founder of HEARDing Cats Collective. He was 43 years with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, most of them as principal percussionist.

"I have been playing with electronics for only seven years less than playing percussion instruments, (started at seven). For me, there is no difference how I create the sounds. My DIY percussion instruments often sound electronic and electronics reflect my percussion experience. I think like a drummer. I have a large collection of "standard" instruments, but would much prefer to create new ones that reflect my "sound junkie" imagination. A musical instrument must respond instantly, and effortlessly to the neuron message sent—just like talking.

With Kyma, there's no delay, or even a bridge from my right brain to my ears. It's taken years, but it's here now. My aim is to create a playing situation that evokes imagination and unique environment for both the listener and myself.

www.close-far.com

Rich O'Donnell - Dream Voices [C/F 032]

Wiggpaw

“Downer Lip”

C-34 Cassette
2016

Side 1
Far Fairies (9:20)
Distant Train with Compliment Percussion (2:26)
Meditation (2:39)
With Leaky Roof Percussion & Terra-cotta Pot Rotation (2:30)

Side 2
I Had a Dream I Was a Firefighter (2:52)
Lit Candle Wick (0:26)
Wash It Up (1:44)
Big Stuff (Sonnets & Meditation) (4:44)

Wiggpaw is the alter ego of Collinsville, Illinois-based artist and musician, Rick Wilson. You may know his antics in ensembles such as the mythological Skarekrauradio sect, the free/noise group Beauty Pageant, the realm-playing duo of Global Distance (with Rick Weaver) or from any number of other shapeshifting side projects he has been a part of in the last couple decades of underground music and performance art taking place in the St. Louis metropolitan area. You may not know his solo material as Wiggpaw which is full of pagan forest magic, pulsing electronics, nature field recordings, junk percussion, and warped song; a concoction that he has dubbed “fieldcore.” All the nature field recordings were captured by Wiggpaw from creeks, springs, and rivers in North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and Illinois during the mornings, afternoons, and evenings throughout the last several years. Downer Lip is comprised of a pulsing nocturnal fairy tale rhapsodizing about water, a warped electronic freak-folk song about being a firefighter in a dream, late night insect song, flickering candles, and the relentless rush of glinting streams in the midday sun. Overall Downer Lip is as hermetic and tenebrist as it is bright and garish just as the weird woods of the Midwest and South are.

Pro-duplication and metallic silver Imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards.
Photographs by Wiggpaw
Design by NNN Cook
Edition of 100

www.close-far.com

Wiggpaw - Far Fairies (excerpt)[C/F 033]

Metaphysical cult music for water hunting. The primeval has not evaporated. Cassette edition of 100. Published on Close/Far Recordings.
www.close-far.com

Part I. Wheel of Light; Cult and Part II. Reservoir; Liquid Spirit

C/F 038

C-24 Cassette
2018

Popular Housing/nebulosa; a split tape of all new compositions from Antonio Leone and Julio Prato—the minds and hearts behind the fantastic St. Louis-based Grownup Music (https://grownupmusic.bandcamp.com)cassette/digital label.

Popular Housing side: Imagine your computer started generating music from untitled ripped MP3s. Forgotten audio files buried deep on a hard drive meld with lo-fi mobile phone recordings that eventually rupture into a novel 
composition. The result is some kind of contemporary sound collage exotica with self-reflexive internet field recordings narrated by Google Translate in Italian. 

nebulosa side: This is dystopian synth pop with a balearic twist via Caracas. "How To Wreck A Nice Beach.” How to recognize speech. How to collect shipwrecked cyborg body parts on a nice beach. Parts of “ open eyelid god ” 
sounds like it could have been on an electro 12” from '85 that was deleted for being too “out". Listen to it at 2 a.m. while cruising around your city or town and sing along; “draw—the—ridge—of—the—beach—on—the—side—
of—my—eyelid.” (island)

—NNN Cook

A
Popular Housing
I. seltruT irT
II. "if i blink fast enough, it’s like a stroboscope effect”
III. Untitled Translation
IV. a hard cover body
V. 

NOTE: Your tape and player are currently working correctly, please listen.
Today, Popular Housing is (in order of appearance): Augie Boyne, Cyrus Pireh, Google Translate, Hardbody, Julio Prato, and Antonio Leone. Recorded with IPhone 5s, in and around the tenement. 

B
nebulosa   “ open eyelid god ”
I.  open
II.  eyelid
III.  god

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Julio Prato

Pro-duplication and imprinting with full color double-sided J-cards
Produced, photographed, and designed by NNN Cook
Edition of 100 on Chrome Tape

www.close-far.com

Popular Housing - Untitled Translation/a hard cover body (excerpt)

nebulosa - god (excerpt)

Sampler of new 30 min NNN Cook cassette out now at 
www.close-far.com
Edition of 100

NNN Cook "Syncretic Offering" sampler

Multi-disciplinary sound and visual artist, NNN Cook runs the Close/Far Recordings cassette label and the Bruxism concert series. He has curated the annually published Rhizomatic St. Louis series for the past 5 years which is a survey of experimental and underground sound art and music from St. Louis artists. Recent collaborations include live performances and recordings with area artists such as: JoAnn J. McNeil in Nyfolt, Chad Z. Hickman in Riverbody, Rick Weaver in Heyoka, Chris Smentkowski in Behindlings, Kevin Harris in Lobster, Matthew Erickson in Blemished Stone, Michael Williams, Dr. Mabuse, Josh Levi, and Ghost Ice.  Although he has performed in Chicago, Kansas City, and Tulsa among other Midwestern cities most of his performances have been in St. Louis at such venues as: The Saint Louis Contemporary Art Museum, The William A. Kerr Foundation, Apop Records, Floating Laboratories, The Way Out Club, Open Lot, Foam, KDHX, and The Schlafly Tap Room.
	
Recent public projects have been collaborations with the Laumeier Sculpture Park for Site/Sound, the World Chess Hall of Fame for a performance of John Cage’s Reunion, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis for Audible Interruptions, a performance for the Oscillations concert series at Experimental Sound Studios (Chicago), a commissioned composition for Alarm Will Sound (NYC) in 2014, and last year he performed at Worm (Rotterdam), with Nyfolt, and recorded in their Klangendum studio. According to The Wire magazine, in a review of his latest solo release (Bl)end User, “Nathan Cook is a distinctive voice in this crowded field [of analogue electronics].”

N.N.N. Cook

Popular tracks