"A Meditation, A Film, A Fortune" is full of delayed and ever-altering field-recordings, manipulated tones and a metallic swirls. Although most of the sounds on the first track, recorded in 2014 and called "A Meditation", hide their origin behind a heavy set of filters and effects, Side B gives an explicit glimpse of its recorded material. A film-projector moving in the center of a sound collage called "A Film" (recorded in 2009), which soon is surrounded by different field-recordings (of a construction site in a city, a radio choir) and pitch-manipulated tapes. It's the perfect composition for a long lost film, a sequel to Dziga Vertov's "Man With a Movie Camera", as it takes its recorded material from different places and assembles it afterwards – a superimposition like in photography or film, where different setups and shots can create one image that is entirely fictional and real at the same time (you can hear the developing bath of the exposed material at the end of "A Film"). "Flüssige Skulptur", the last track of the album, manages to draw back to the beginning of Side A. Not only was it recorded in 2014 as well, it stems from similar sound-roots too. Again a looped sequence, that sounds a bit like a marimba, evolves over time, shifts from foreground to background as other sounds emerge – muted, hazy, like sparks of dust – until the whole composition slowly fades out, leaving the listener to the hiss of the analogue tape-material.

James Edmonds (*1983) is a visual artist currently living and working in Berlin and London. His work includes paintings, installations, film and sound studies.

soundcloud.com/wafflecotton
www.jamesedmonds.org

mc-11

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REVIEWS

Raised by Gypsies: "James Edmonds "A Meditation, A Film, A Fortune" makes me think of the Dashboard Confessional album title "A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar" except that I never really understood that other title (to me, a "mark" is always about professional wrestling) but I can completely understand and agree with the ideas of James Edmonds on meditation, film and fortune. So I guess I'm saying if you're going to have a title like this, have the items your listing make some sort of better sense than the Dashboard Confessional album (which is still my second favorite of his) …" Read the whole review here: raisedbygypsies.blogspot.de/2015/04/cassette-review-james-edmonds.html

Vital Weekly (976): "James Edmonds works and lives in Berlin and London, and he paints, creates installations and films and plays music. He too uses "ever-altering field-recordings, manipulated tones and a metallic swirls", even when I am not sure what those are. In the piece on side, 'A Meditation' is perhaps not as meditative as Yabrov's music, and while there seems to be a lot of field recordings, it's all very well hidden beneath a cover of all sorts of computer technology. In 'A Film', the opening piece of side B, we hear the sound of projector, which is clear but then mixed into this are a lot of additional sounds from field recordings and perhaps even there is manipulation all around. The final piece is Flüssige Skulptur" which seems to be the most electronic piece here, of rhythmic sounds, which are slowly transformed and get out of phase. It might be some percussion instrument fed through a synthesizer. I read it has to do with the same source material as 'A Meditation', which is not something I could easily hear; but who knows? Yes, it could very well that we are dealing with the same source material being worked out differently. It's hard to tell, but Edmondson takes two distinct routes from that material. Nice release altogether."