Over the past few years Gabriel Saloman has developed a reputation for releasing penetrating works of haunting beauty in his new role as a solo performer and composer. Known for his part in the seminal electronic-noise duo Yellow Swans (alongside Pete Swanson), Saloman has taken the sweeping drones and fried electricity of his former band and embedded them within an expanding pallette of bowed strings, martial percussion and resonant piano. The majority of his work to date has been developed as music for contemporary dance, exemplified by two recent solo albums with Miasmah, 2012’s melancholic Adhere and last years celebrated ode to mud and decay Soldier’s Requiem. As he continues to prolifically produce music for dance, Saloman has developed a new series with Shelter Press to make these works available: Movement Building.
The first of two volumes to be released individually on vinyl and together on CD, The Disciplined Body is a 34 minute work that moves through ghostly minimalist drones, poly-vocal drumming and culminates in an aching climb through sheets of shimmering guitar chords before erupting in a violent spurt of harsh noise. While at its climax it may be evocative of transcendental string manglers ranging from My Bloody Valentine to Godspeed You Black Emperor, in its more subtle moments it wades through the kind of blackened water that suggests the outer boundaries of ambient metal, or the ghostly remnants of a cassette dub of beatless electronics. Composed for Daisy Karen Thompson’s “Re-Marks on Source Material”, the music shares that dance’s Foucault influenced questioning of the limits imposed on our bodies by technology and labor, reaching for an ecstatic escape from discipline and control. Listeners may want to reach for the same - to do so we suggest they play this recording very very loud.
Mastered and cut by Elmut Herler at D+M (Berlin) and pressed in a limited edition of 500 copies worldwide.
Tracklist
A1. The Disciplined Body
B1. The Disciplined Body (Part. 2)
released November 18, 2014
All music by GMS (guitar, percussion)
MBv1 originally composed for "Re-Marks on Source Material" - a dance choreographed by Daisy Karen Thompson.
Recorded at 611 Alexander and SFU SCA in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories, Spring and Summer 2013.
Gratitude to Claire Fontaine, Jin-Me Yoon, Juan Manuel Sepulveda, Alize Zorlatuna, d., and the interpreters of Re-Marks: David Clennin, Katie DeVries, Francesca Frewer, Jana M. Jacues, Michael Kong, Jessie Kwan, Alexa Solveig Mardon, Erika Mitsuhashi, Olivia Shaffer, Kimberly Stevenson & Yawen Wang.
Cover photo by Yvonne Chen
Design by Bartolome Sanson
Dedicated to Daisy
Released by Shelter Press - SP051 -
www.shelter-press.com