Track 2 from No Lands' debut album, NEGATIVE SPACE, coming July 29, 2014 on digital, CD, 12" vinyl, and limited-edition clear vinyl

PRE-ORDER HERE:  http://nolands.bandcamp.com/

www.nolands.org
www.newamrecords.com/negative-space

Negative Space is the debut full-length LP from No Lands, the recording project of Brooklyn-based electronic musician and sound artist Michael Hammond.

As a sound designer, producer, and programmer, Hammond has fostered a lifelong obsession with sound. Growing up in West Tennessee in the 90s, Hammond first began his recording experiments on the family desktop computer, printing his sprawling opuses on CD-Rs and pushing the limits of primitive processors.

Later, Hammond spent time creating custom music software and soldering together speakers in a search for new sounds. Studying with visionary composer and instrument builder Dan Trueman, Hammond further honed his technical craft. On Negative Space, some of these tools are employed, along with an arsenal of guitars, vintage synthesizers, drum machines, and processed vocals to create pristine and enveloping sound worlds.

Written and recorded over the course of 3 years, the album is an atlas of the sounds that have preoccupied Hammond. While the majority of the instruments were performed by Hammond, the album features cameos from Anthony LaMarca (current touring member of The War on Drugs and previously a member of St. Vincent), Aaron Roche (who performs regularly with R. Stevie Moore and Chris Schlarb), and Jay Hammond.

When performing live, Hammond is joined by these musicians. The four-piece becomes a digital hive mind of wires and devices, with each individual's vocals and instruments filtered through the central brain of Hammond's computer.

In visual art, the concept of negative space refers to the areas around and between the subject of a work of art. The auditory equivalent of negative space is not immediately apparent. Is it silence (as John Cage might conceive of it)? Or maybe noise? On Negative Space, No Lands plumbs the depths of these questions with a patience and intensity that is rare. Ultimately, the album is a document of this obsessive relationship with both sound and song, the genesis of which spans the course of three years and a hurricane.

Negative Space consists of 9 sonic environments that range from ambient soundscapes to sprawling song structures. The album drifts from one environment to the next as if navigating a dream state. Swirling digital textures give way momentarily to tightly arranged songs. Some tracks are cut off abruptly and swallowed whole (see the end of “Pretender” or “City”) while others transfix the listener into a deep hypnosis (“Sleep Atlas”).

Much of the music for Negative Space was written and recorded following a period of itinerancy in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The flood swept through Hammond’s apartment and studio space in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and leaked a particular feeling of unease and rootlessness into his music. The watery world that displaced him became a renewed object of fascination, kindling a nascent obsession with all things aquatic.

Visions of vast bodies of water and civilization lost pervade the album: on “Seawall,” Hammond sings: "Sea flowing westward, reveal the streets of gold." At the same time, the name No Lands itself suggests both a warning and a fantasy, a liminal state where blissful glitch sets the stage for a synthesizer melody desperately gasping for its final breath (“Icefisher”). The No Lands sound is born of the clash between the creative and destructive qualities of water, where the difference between the displacement of a flood and the zeal of an afternoon swim is never quite clear.

Negative Space was mixed by Alexander Overington and mastered by Joe Lambert. In addition to digital and CD, the album will be available on 12" vinyl, including a limited edition run of clear vinyl.

City

Track 3 from No Lands' debut album, NEGATIVE SPACE, coming July 29, 2014 on digital, CD, 12" vinyl, and limited-edition clear vinyl

PRE-ORDER HERE: nolands.bandcamp.com/

www.nolands.org
www.newamrecords.com/negative-space

Negative Space is the debut full-length LP from No Lands, the recording project of Brooklyn-based electronic musician and sound artist Michael Hammond.

As a sound designer, producer, and programmer, Hammond has fostered a lifelong obsession with sound. Growing up in West Tennessee in the 90s, Hammond first began his recording experiments on the family desktop computer, printing his sprawling opuses on CD-Rs and pushing the limits of primitive processors.

Later, Hammond spent time creating custom music software and soldering together speakers in a search for new sounds. Studying with visionary composer and instrument builder Dan Trueman, Hammond further honed his technical craft. On Negative Space, some of these tools are employed, along with an arsenal of guitars, vintage synthesizers, drum machines, and processed vocals to create pristine and enveloping sound worlds.

Written and recorded over the course of 3 years, the album is an atlas of the sounds that have preoccupied Hammond. While the majority of the instruments were performed by Hammond, the album features cameos from Anthony LaMarca (current touring member of The War on Drugs and previously a member of St. Vincent), Aaron Roche (who performs regularly with R. Stevie Moore and Chris Schlarb), and Jay Hammond.

When performing live, Hammond is joined by these musicians. The four-piece becomes a digital hive mind of wires and devices, with each individual's vocals and instruments filtered through the central brain of Hammond's computer.

In visual art, the concept of negative space refers to the areas around and between the subject of a work of art. The auditory equivalent of negative space is not immediately apparent. Is it silence (as John Cage might conceive of it)? Or maybe noise? On Negative Space, No Lands plumbs the depths of these questions with a patience and intensity that is rare. Ultimately, the album is a document of this obsessive relationship with both sound and song, the genesis of which spans the course of three years and a hurricane.

Negative Space consists of 9 sonic environments that range from ambient soundscapes to sprawling song structures. The album drifts from one environment to the next as if navigating a dream state. Swirling digital textures give way momentarily to tightly arranged songs. Some tracks are cut off abruptly and swallowed whole (see the end of “Pretender” or “City”) while others transfix the listener into a deep hypnosis (“Sleep Atlas”).

Much of the music for Negative Space was written and recorded following a period of itinerancy in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The flood swept through Hammond’s apartment and studio space in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn and leaked a particular feeling of unease and rootlessness into his music. The watery world that displaced him became a renewed object of fascination, kindling a nascent obsession with all things aquatic.

Visions of vast bodies of water and civilization lost pervade the album: on “Seawall,” Hammond sings: "Sea flowing westward, reveal the streets of gold." At the same time, the name No Lands itself suggests both a warning and a fantasy, a liminal state where blissful glitch sets the stage for a synthesizer melody desperately gasping for its final breath (“Icefisher”). The No Lands sound is born of the clash between the creative and destructive qualities of water, where the difference between the displacement of a flood and the zeal of an afternoon swim is never quite clear.

Negative Space was mixed by Alexander Overington and mastered by Joe Lambert. In addition to digital and CD, the album will be available on 12" vinyl, including a limited edition run of clear vinyl.

Pretender

from https://nolands.bandcamp.com/album/negative-space

Outside Of You

No Lands remix of Caroline Shaw's Partita for 8 Voices, performed by Roomful of Teeth.

Originally premiered by Q2 Music.

nolands.org

Allemande (No Lands Remix)

Remix by No Lands.

Original recording by yMusic:  https://ymusicensemble.bandcamp.com/track/bladed-stance-marcos-balter

"When I first heard Marcos Balter's composition Bladed Stance, I was struck by what seemed like a simple and subtly beautiful piece (simple in terms of effect, if not necessarily construction or execution). Upon further research (i.e. a Google search), I realized the title Bladed Stance actually comes from a way of standing used frequently by police officers when confronting suspected criminals. After learning this I began to detect an undercurrent of conflict lurking beneath the shimmering surface of the piece. Whether or not this was the composer's intention, I don't know, but I was working on the remix while following the recent news of the grand jury decisions in Missouri and here in New York, so conflict was certainly on my mind.  For my remix I decided to bring these things I was hearing in the background of the piece to the foreground, distorting some of the instruments beyond recognition and splicing in some found sound from a police training academy." - MH

Bladed Stance (yMusic) - No Lands Remix

Written for CT-SWaM Contemporary Temporary - Sound Works and Music

8 Channel Audio

For Percussion, Hardware, and Software

(This is a stereo mix)

Uses RotaryX – a custom software device for multi-channel mixing on the fly.

No Lands

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