Published
Thu, Aug 27, 2015, 02:22
- The two-track release comes from a performance in Berlin based on long-range radio transmissions.
Emptyset have a live recording, Signal, coming out next month on Subtext.
The Bristol experimental duo, AKA James Ginzburg (who helps run the label) and Paul Purgas, haven't put out a record since late 2013, when they appeared on Raster-Noton with their Recur LP. That year also saw the release on Subtext of Material, which continued the duo's outside-the-studio experiments with sound sent through different large-scale acoustic spaces. Their next release, from a project of the same name, appears to be the next step in that endeavor—this time, the method is based on long-distance, high-frequency radio transmissions.
Signal's two tracks were culled from a live performance in Berlin in February, commissioned with support from the experimental arts festival CTM and Deutschlandradio, where Ginzburg and Purgas transmitted "audio composed of sine wave structures" across a 2000km radio circuit. The sound traveled from the Berlin performance space to the Nauen Transmitter Station outside the city, the oldest such installation in the world, and then to a radio base in central France, Émetteur d'Issoudun; from there it was re-transmitted and received back in Berlin.
As the label puts it, this process, involving "multiple atmospheric bounces," "ornamented and shaped the signal in accordance with physical fluctuations in the ionosphere, atmospheric noise and solar radiation patterns." The excerpts from this event, totaling about 16 minutes, will be made available on September 11th via vinyl and digital formats.
Subtext is also preparing to reissue Emptyset's self-titled first album, which originally came out in 2009 on Caravan Recordings, and was the first part of an LP triptych that also included 2011's Demiurge for Subtext and 2013's Recur. These moves follow last month's release on the label of an album from Yair Elazar Glotman.
Listen to Signal's "Side 1" below.
Tracklist
A Side 1
B Side 2
Subtext will release Signal on September 11th, 2015.