DALE LLOYD SEMPER CD (in conjunction with and/OAR) A19
Semper is Alluvial's first release of 2005 and is co-released with the and/OAR label. Seattle-based composer Dale Lloyd has collaborated in the past with people such as Yannick Dauby and Michael Northam, and has had work released by labels such as Bremsstrahlung Recordings, Staalplaat and Sirr.ecords. For the past 5 years, Lloyd has played a quietbut strong role in bringing new life to the notion of "environmental recordings as sound art" (or "Phonography") with the highly regarded compilations produced for Phonography.org, as well as other projects and activities. The first piece entitled "Semper", is mostly a quiet and contemplative work, yet it contains sprawling builds from near silent ebbs and flows to thunderous crescendos. Also heard are delicate field recordings and found objects transformed and woven into intricate electronic tapestries.The second and shorter piece titled "Magnesian Recumbit" is a slowly building ambient work with a unique sense of melancholy that makes fora perfect ending."For me, Semper basically illustrates a series of self-searching questions (with subtle epiphanies) followed by a somewhat enigmatic resolve or 'answer', of which I believe we have all encountered in our lives in one way or another."- Dale Lloyd
SOLD OUT
REVIEWS
Vital Weeky 473 (Frans de Waard)
"In the world of field recordings, and the music made thereof, the name DaleLloyd should not be unknown, even when he so far released his work on MP3 and CDRs. This is I believe his first 'real' CD. It consists of the lenghty titlepiece and the shorter 'Magnesian Recumbit'. The soundsources listed as the usual 'field recordings, electronic sounds, toy xylophone, old coins and othermetallic and found objects'. It's hard to trace back the origin of the field recordings, save for some of the water and insect sounds, but most of the times,the computer is working overtime to process all the sounds into a nice ambient glitch mass. Densely layered with some the microphone quite close to the objects (a trick of trade Lloyd shares with people like Yannick Dauby or MNortham). The combination of the sometimes warm, natural sounds and the somewhat colder electronic sounds work in quite a nice way. 'Semper' is divided in smaller parts, each with it's distinct, own character. 'Magnesian Recumbit' is more of drone piece, with loops and layers of the metallic objects, working in a trance like way. The two pieces have a rather pastoral feel to it, it sounds quite solemnly. Two great works, pity the CD is rather short at that".
W I R E M A G A Z I N E #257 (JULY 2005, Jim Haynes)
Semper: Recapitulating the lowercase ethos previously established by Steve Roden and John Hudak, Dale Lloyd manipulates delicate textural events and subtle field recordings for a poetic sensibility that privileges passages of silence and a Zen-like attentiveness to sounds which might otherwise go unnoticed. This album is less of a cohesive body of work, more of a series of loosely related sketches that emerge from Lloyd's refined use of empty space. He runs everything through a variety of DSP techniques, resulting in plasticity countering the organic sounds of birds, insects, and closely observed gestures from old coins and other metallic found objects. The crackling ether from controlled feedback also grafts itself onto those natural elements, further distancing them from their original context. In all of their poetic restraint and well executed detail, the sounds of Semper beg for a larger narrative context to be fully realised.
PARIS TRANSATLANTIC (SEPTEMBER 2005, Massimo Ricci)
Thirty-three minutes and forty-four seconds of assertive and beautifully cultivated microscopic detail and great assembling mastery; Semper easily gets my vote as one of the best records of 2005. Dale Lloyd, who's revealing himself as a very talented composer in many ways (check out his recent Amalgam on Conv.Net Lab) brings together "field recordings, electronic sounds, toy xylophone, old coins and other metallic and found objects" in two intoxicating soundscapes in which thunder, rain, birds and insects fuse unconventionally with the eternal subsonics of a distant earthquake rumble in waves whose depth is felt under the muscle tissue. One can only imagine the painstaking process necessary to place every single attribute in the right light, but such meticulous attention to detail pays high dividends, as the slo-mo radiance coming out of the speakers throbs with vital resonance that's almost painful to experience.
GAZ-ETA Number 40, Poland, February 2006 (Tom Sekowski)
Environmental recording artist Dale Lloyd knows the true meaning of a field recording. His latest release "Semper" sees him quietly reinventing his micro-tonal approach. In reality, this brief [33 minutes] work is about the delicate detail of the sound, rather than the abstract sound itself. Lloyd forces the listener to pay close attention to every minute click, every minute field recording he has assembled here. By using various sounds [electronic] and those that are found in the natural world [old coins, xylophone and various found objects], he surrounds our world with an all-encompassing aural experience. Without a hint of a doubt, "Semper" is music that pulls you in with a magnetic force.
E / I MAGAZINE ISSUE 6, WINTER / SPRING 2006 (William S. Fields)
Semper: Co-released with Alluvial, Semper's two recombinant environmental recordings are specimens of Dale Lloyd's fealty to the art of phonography as an act of both documentary preservation and mimetic creation. The title composition, a daisy chain of discrete vignettes, arrives wrapped in sandpaper-and-rice textures soon shuffling the listener into habitats humid, convulsive and weather-stained. Semper's atmospheres retain traces of this same gusty front throughout the life of the piece, drenching its landscapes in moods reminiscent of Lloyd-collaborators like Kim Cascone and Francisco Lopez in hue and timescale. Dynamic controls and a gift for tone and color are Lloyd's strengths, but even at 33 minutes the muted, clustered frequencies and affected gravities wear thin, winded beneath the weight of too much dawn-or-dusk syncretism, too many mechanical commas to support its duration. Taken as a
compendium of grey days and unpopulated prairies, it remains a well-made and engaging listen that, nevertheless, leaves one positively aching for the occasional sunnier clime.
Auf Abwegen #35, Winter 2005 (Till Kniola)
Es gibt immer wieder spannende Ergebnisse im weiten Feld der field recordings. Immer starker wird in letzter Zeit die Frage diskutiert, wie in Zeiten der einfachen Verfugbarkeit aller moglichen Klange mit der Kontextlosung von Aufnahmen, gerade transkulturell, umzugehen sei. Dale lloyd umgeht auf Semper dieses Problem, in dem er seine Feldgerausche so stark manipuliert, dass Ruckschlusse auf den Kontext kaum moglich sind. Bzw. er arbeitet tatsachlich mit vermeintlich unpolitischen, weil menschenleeren Gerauschen: Windrauschen, Donnergrollen, Wasser (fur Fans ubrigens dringend empfohen: Lloyd's eigenes Feldaufnahmen-Label/Mailorder and/OAR!).
