"[Catriel Nievas and Joe Wheeler] nail it, basically, using field recordings and minimal guitar to present austere, enigmatic and often quite baffling compositions. There’s a little overlap in approach with artists like Graham Lambkin or Vanessa Rossetto, I guess, but there’s something about the way in which the material is handled here that is plenty original. Field recordings are nothing new, true, and even the studied nonchalance the duo brings to the explanations of their chosen material (‘raw recordings of unfinished travels’ – Nievas; ‘to capture really whatever was in front of me at the right time’ – Wheeler) has a familiar ring. Yet they succeed in bringing something of the texture of lived, everyday experience into their recordings, the banality and magic of living in the world, that gives these pieces a kind of … truth, really, although one that’s abstract and generated from their dreamy, fuzzy textures rather than literal fidelity to any locations. These tracks have a foggy, messy quality that is particularly endearing, despite us not knowing whether they’re made up of single recordings or several stitched together – to be honest, clues about what’s going on, where, and with whom are thin on the ground, although there often seems to be distinct shifts in location, occasionally even transforming into a disorientating non-space of hazy, drone-like hiss."
~ Paul Margree, We Need No Swords
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Catriel: “My records are raw recordings of unfinished travels, periods of time when nothing seems to happen, my home is completely empty, the sound of a waving hand of a lucky cat in the living room. A time of change from one state to another mediated by sound, perhaps some balance between what I was and what I am.”
Joe: “Most of the recordings I took happened locally in Cedarville, Ohio, in my backyard, my house, or around town. During August the cicadas where pretty animated, and they are heard throughout the album. I took a trip to visit my Grandma in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the middle of working on the album and I used recordings I took there in the track “guitarra – outside at 9PM” most notably. In “Outro” I used a recording I took of my dad putting flooring into our living room.
Less specifically, my desire for this recording was to capture really whatever was in front of me at the right time.”
This is the first collaboration between Nievas and Wheeler, and Marginal Frequency is proud to make it available to you.
composed and recorded by Nievas/Wheeler
Recording locations: Ohio, Tennessee, Argentina
Mastered by A.F. Jones, San Diego, CA
Cover Art by Joe Wheeler, design/layout by Jones
C45 on high quality chrome, edition of 50
Includes unlimited streaming of MFCS D | Catriel Nievas/Joe Wheeler - balance
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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