We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

21st Century Field Hollers and Prison Songs

by Bruce Russell

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

      $9 NZD  or more

     

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.

about

This album was made in 2006 entirely from samples taken from the Midnight Crossroads Tape Recorder Blues album, which I made with Ralf Wehowsky for A Bruit Secret. Like that album it is a tribute to the spirit of the blues, viewed through a prism of 21st century cultural criticism. It evokes an earlier era when the relationship between a performer and a song arose out of a community, not a property relation. In appropriating my own material I have short-circuited the prevailing ethos of piracy and bricolage, and returned in a sense, to my self.
Despite being made in New Zealand, and using some recordings from the Rhineland, the two places that are really central to this album are the Mississippi Delta and the island of Jamaica.
It is in the spirit of hommage that I offer this re-configuration of my own evocation of the blues - as a dub album. It consists of the radically re-used recorded components of an existing work to compose something new, emphasizing elements that were previously backgrounded, and dropping into new contexts recognisable elements of the original to allow them to be reconsidered in a new light.
With the exception of Ralf’s sitar, all the instrumental sounds on this album were made with a steel stringed acoustic guitar. The other sound sources are my voice and a range of recorded media, including archival acetate discs and analogue ¼ inch tape. In the case of the tracks eponymously described as ‘dubs’, the sound of the media is amplified, edited and effected to form the basis of the track, over which other elements are introduced from the loops.
In the case of the ‘blues’, each loop quoted here had been used as an integral part of the composition process on Midnight Crossroads Tape Recorder Blues. For this project I re-recorded them at various speeds to the hard drive of my laptop. The various samples of each loop were then used to construct a new piece for this album. At this point the sounds were several steps removed from their ‘blues’ roots, but I feel that the spirit imbued in their fundamental particles was still there.

credits

released January 4, 2006

All instruments, recordings and production by Bruce Russell except for parts of track 9, recorded by Vanessa Coxhead, and the sitar samples (track 4), played and recorded by Ralf Wehowsky. Previously released on CD by w.m.o/r and on LP by Rococco Records, in 2006 and 2007. Thanks Mattin.

license

tags

about

Bruce Russell Lyttelton, New Zealand

Bruce Russell is an inveterate improviser and practitioner in sound,. Since 1987 he has been a member of the Dead C. He also performs with Alastair Galbraith as A Handful of Dust (since 1984). His solo guitar practice reconfigures the blues as a form of improvisational auto-destruction.
Full bio at www.audioculture.co.nz/people/bruce-russell
Writing at drbrucerussell.academia.edu
... more

contact / help

Contact Bruce Russell

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Report this album or account

Bruce Russell recommends:

If you like Bruce Russell, you may also like: