Donation Tier - this option includes a cassette and enamel pin at the cost of $18, with $9 of that directed to the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association (abenakiart.org). We encourage you to donate more, all amounts over $18 will be donated alongside the $9.
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Ltd. Edition Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album
edition of 75, housed in vellum OBI
Includes unlimited streaming of Thetford
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Religious architecture functions both as a mode of creating shelter for reverence and worship while at the same time creating an aura of authenticity within a given community. Form functions differently than say the local post office building, the bank, the grocery store. A history and purpose simultaneously visible and obfuscated. The music created and shared within these spaces is assumed to exist in harmony with the moral and spiritual teachings of the associated sect. However, the spectral tracings of this music reveals an altogether more complex portrait of what our shared histories, languages, trauma, and traditions say about life lived between being and not being.
Vermont residents Weston Olencki and Jack Langdon situated themselves within the gnarled wood outpost of the Thetford Hill Church in Thetford, VT for their first output as UNIONBLOCK. A shared curiosity about the latent histories of American vernacular musics and what is both said and unsaid in the musical traditions of rural and working class American musical practices; they present the haunting and forceful album Thetford. Composed of the epic subterranean dirge, "Coupler" and the quick witted chaser of "Brick Whittle", the album finds Landgon employing mid century-era mechanical tracker organ and Olencki's own homemade electromagnetic banjos. Drones both fractured and contiguous, their offerings foreground the relationship between digital languages and mechanical construction.
Question making within the church is a peculiar and challenging proposition. We are told these spaces are where we find answers, respite from the unanswerable taunts that exists outside their spirited doorways. The architectural music of UNIONBLOCK provides no escape from these questions, but when we sit in the unknowing and surrender ourselves to this space, perhaps we can know a little more about how to live in harmony with the complexity of this land, its history, and its language.
credits
released May 20, 2022
Concept, performance, recording and production by UNIONBLOCK (Weston Olencki and Jack Landgon)
Jack Langdon: mechanical tracker organ
Weston Olencki: electromagnetic banjos
Recorded November 2021 in Thetford, Vermont at the Thetford Hill Church.
Founded in 1783, it is the home of the longest continuously active religious congregation in what is now known as the United States.
I loved reading through the complications and spectacular efforts that went into creating these pieces, but even more the works in themselves are masterful structures full of meaning and compelling invention. One of those rare records that leaves you able to imagine vast fields of unexplored musical territory, and assures you that the explorer sent out to them is sure to exceed what you can imagine Giles
“There is a quality I would use to describe something going on in the music of Kali Malone. In Living Torch, I feel what I would call “the isness of what is happening,” breaching denial, inciting acknowledgement & caring, in the midst of devastation, & holding it still.”
My full review essay at https://eliotcardinaux.wordpress.com/2024/06/05/kali-malone-living-torch/ eliotcardinaux
Composer Aleksandra Słyż explores the physicality of stringed and wind instruments on this vibrant LP, her first for Warm Winters Ltd. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 27, 2022
The collaboration between Jos Smolders & Jim O'Rourke creates surreal, spacious soundscapes meant for deep listening. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 21, 2021
From the title and instrumentation, one would expect meditative music with folk elements, but here it goes in a different direction. Contemplativeness may be a strong component here, but its essence lies in the search for and exploration of new sounds and the reflection of the electroacoustic image within traditional contours. jiristepan