APPALACHIAN VORTEX TOUR Album

September 18, 2019

I am very excited to share this album I made with Andrei Jay, titled: APPALACHIAN VORTEX TOUR. Near the end of summer, we went on a camping road trip through the Appalachians in search of caves, hollows, and other basins of vortex energy in the forest. I brought my field recorder and my shortwave radio, and Andrei brought two Volca FM synthesizers, and we recorded a series of jams at various locations along the way. We were able to pick up electromagnetic interference within the shortwave bands from the built-in amplifier circuits in the Volcas, making the radio act as a kind of extra amplifier which added unique distortions and textures.

The sounds of the environment also became part of the recordings, so you can hear crickets, running water, wind, other humans, natural reverb of stone and metal, and the spatialized presence of the built-in speakers of the volcas, intertwined with signals drifting in and out from shortwave broadcasts.

The album art, a map of the vortexes we toured, was drawn electronically and then plotted with a robotic drawing machine in the expanded media department at Alfred University.

🔈 Listen to the album: Bandcamp