For those who actually don’t know yet, I have been toiling away in “sound arts” for over two decades, a process which occasionally results in some sort of tangible (and audible, natch) product. Here is my most recent offering, one which I’m confident in saying subscribers to the H.T. column might find interesting (note: apologies for lack of an embedded Bandcamp player, seems like that functionality isn’t supported here).
Here’s some additional “promo” notes on the project:
The newest CD release from electronic composer Thomas Bey-William Bailey, now active for over 20 years in the musical undergrounds of Japan, Continental Europe and the U.S., is the first for his newly minted “Fifteen Minutes of Anonymity” label. It’s also the first to arrive after a cataclysmic series of global and personal events which eventually prompted the reconsideration of a decisions, made in 2021, to completely abandon any sort of public-facing creative output. Nearly 50 minutes in length, the increased / renewed sense of determination shows in its sprawling and yet tightly-focused approach, through which TBWB’s signature chaotic / musique concrete-style edits melt into passages of dislocated, ethereal ambience.
Though not guided at all by any grand “conceptual” narrative, the music here is generally inspired by themes of unstable personal identity, and an innate restlessness which causes moments of transition to be more desirable than the reaching of any conclusions or destinations: guided by a sense of being “perpetually in-transit”, TBWB calls upon other key influences which have accomplished a similar altered state with their sonic tools: composers such as Giacinto Scelsi, the esoteric flourishes of Coil or Nurse With Wound, isolated pieces of interstitial strangeness like Robert Ashley’s Automatic Writing.
Having been busy with full-length book projects during the time of this album’s composition, TBWB’s predilection for all things information-rich also informed the methodology behind tracks like “A Passive Circle of Vicious Acceptance…”, with its weird bio-mechanical choirs and mischievously morphing sampled material, or “Epic Nobody” with its deceptively gentle feedback hovering over a polyphony of non-verbal vocalizations. His noisier side is on full display with the as-loud-as-possible, full-spectrum computer meltdown of “Luna Moth Serenade” (also featuring a gorgeously overloaded video by collaborator Susana Lopez), and this can be contrasted with the warm (yet still volatile) grandeur of “Inmingled With Ashes Of The Sun”. All told, “Metaphysics…” is a reclaiming of vague terrain in a time and place where too many others are still insisting on a boring and unsustainable form of absolute clarity.
Enjoy!,
T.B.