Northern

Shell Shell Bye

Technology and imperfection. The raw and the processed. Curator and curated. Solo explorer and gregarious collaborator. The life and work of Taylor Deupree are less a study in contradictions than a portrait of the multidisciplinary artist in a still-young century.

Deupree is an accomplished sound artist whose recordings, rich with abstract atmospherics, have appeared on numerous record labels, and well as in site-specific installations at such institutions as the ICC (Tokyo, Japan) and the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (Yamaguchi, Japan). He started out, in the 1990s, making new noises that edged outward toward the fringes of techno, and in time he found his own path to follow. His music today emphasizes a hybrid of natural sounds and technological mediation. It’s marked by a deep attention to stillness, to an almost desperate near-silence. His passion for the studio as a recording instrument is paramount in his work, but there is no hint of digital idolatry. If anything, his music shows a marked attention to the aesthetics of error, to the short circuits not only in technological systems but in human perception.

And though there is an aura of insularity to Depuree’s work, he is a prolific collaborator, having worked with the likes of Stephan Mathieu, Christopher Willits, Kenneth Kirschner, Eisi, Frank Bretschneider, Richard Chartier, Savvas Ysatis, and Tetsu Inoue.

Deupree dedicates as much time to other people’s music as he does to his own. In 1997 he founded the record label 12k, which since then has released over 80 recordings by some of the most accomplished musicians and sound artists of our time, among them Alva Noto, Steve Roden, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Steven Vitiello. Many share with Deupree an interest in stark minimalism, but the label has also found room for, located a common ground with, the acoustic avant-garage, the instrumental derivations of post-rock, and the synthetic extremes of techno.

And collectively, the cover jackets to the 12k album releases have served as an ongoing exhibit of Deupree’s photography, its lofi aesthetic, with an emphasis on damage and wear and antiquated tech, closely paralleling his music. (His photos have also graced numerous books, design anthologies, and other recordings and projects.)

Deupree continues to evolve his sound with an ambition and drive that is masked by his music’s inherent quietude. He approaches each project with an expectation of new directions, new processes, and new junctures.

Shell Shell Bye

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