AM
AM by Conflux Coldwell was released in 2017 on Crooked Acres Records to critical acclaim.
"It's everything hauntology could and should be in 2017" The Wire
Top Ten Experimental 2017, A Closer Listen
"More than a eulogy for a dying medium it is a fascinating aural meditation on the paradox of progress" Joseph Sannicandro, A Closer Listen
"It is easy to get nostalgic when listening to these pieces, particularly when presented through a patina of imperfection, like memories half-remembered and quickly slipping away" Electronic Sound Magazine
"Haunted by what never was—and yet will always be—AM gathers ghostly sounds from radios commonly used in Cold War espionage. Copy or not, CC plays crackerjack sleuth to perfection." Todd B. Gruel , A Closer Listen
We are saturated in the incessant pulsing of invisible lights, their waves pass through walls and through our bodies without our noticing, carrying memories, pictures, music and strange signals.
Like some synesthesia machine, the radio allows us to tune into them, and listen to these lights.
However, as the digital revolution advances a desert has opened up in the once busy aether. The analogue airwaves are slowly dying. Huge tracks of AM radio have been abandoned for newer methods of broadcast. This album was created out of the odd scraps of sound left behind in the void - strange military signals, faint foreign stations and morse code flickering in a sea of unending noise and static.
Every sound used to make this music was recorded from a Sony ICF-2001D Synthesised Receiver, a worldband radio from the 1980s capable of picking up very long-distance signals. This machine is historically significant because of its role in Cold War espionage. It was used by Eastern-Bloc spies in the West to receive coded messages in the form of mysterious ‘numbers stations’, a very few of which still seem to be in operation.
Due to the way shortwave signals are reflected back off the ionosphere, the best time to record these distant signals is just before dawn.
https://confluxcoldwell.bandcamp.com/album/am
Medium
Music and Video
Year
2017
