project

title : Minor Distance

artist : Daniel Howe and Bill Seaman

special Limited Edition : reworks by the humble bee (craig tattersall)

The title of Minor Distance, a collaboration between myself and Daniel Howe, refers to the processes by which the album came to be. Much of the work on these pieces was done at a distance, with the two of us sending samples, and later, full tracks, back and forth over the web. The distances in this case were hardly “minor”, though. I was variously located in North Carolina, Seoul, Bremen, Frankfurt and Berlin, while Howe was in Hong Kong, Thailand, mainland China and New York. We were together only very briefly at the start, in Providence, RI, and then again, after a significant temporal distance, in Hong Kong for mastering. Though this is not the first time we’ve worked together: we collaborated on the Architecture of Association (shown in a number of different versions around the world), the Engine of Engines (which premiered recently in Hong Kong) and the Bisociation Engine, a longer-term project still in the works.

The next distance—this one perhaps more "minor"—was in the kinds of systems we used to create these compositions. Tracks most often began with Howe’s improvised guitar through the custom software he created for the album (Howe is quite a unique individual in that he has had a few different lives — a composer/musician, writer, media artist and computer scientist). I would listen to all of our samples. In particular I listened to the database of samples Daniel sent over and over. I would often start with my own simple piano loops that I would repeat. I would then listen to the samples and see which ones would work. I would then often pitch shift or fragment Daniel's samples to fit with this sequence. Many times they functioned as is... The process played out like constructing a puzzle in reverse, adding in layers of Daniels samples, fragments of his samples, historical samples, etc. where abstractions were happening on different levels. On the track level I was doing much with time stretching. Also with exploring the transposition of entire sections of the track. I was also experimenting with very long time stretching of the piano and rhythmic samples --- I would often choose fragments of these to also loop at the initial pass of starting the track. Once this basic structure was in place, I would then explore additional electronic abstractions of historical samples from the repository I’ve been collecting since the early 90s. Later with the entire track sent via .als files, Daniel became active in moving entire sections around and transposing things. Tweaking levels, removing parts, changing EQ, etc.

So there is also a distance in time traversed here too, as samples from live sessions, some created nearly 25 years ago, are translated into the contemporary context of the album. In addition to Howe’s guitar and my piano, the “voices” heard most consistently across tracks, the recording features trumpet parts from Robert Ellis-Geiger (who also did a fine job mastering the album).

Once this topology was established, Howe and I could then work more dialogically, sending arrangements back and forth in a process of iteration that sometimes resulted in 30 or more versions of a single piece.

We worked with several designers in Hong Kong for the original CD release, featuring the brilliant work of Brooklyn artist Clement Valla. We then met with Craig Tattersall (“the Humble Bee”) about a special edition of the album on Cotton Goods. In addition to the design for the website and the limited edition release, Tatersall’s four stunning reworks also reference “distance” in their relationship to the originals, now perceived only in subtle hints and familiar textures. Finally, the Cotton Goods design employs antique book covers that have traveled far in both time and space to end up here in the exquisite limited edition. We hope you enjoy it…

Bill Seaman

May 10, 2014

http://rednoise.org/~dhowe/

http://www.billseaman.com​