By My Side; I Am Your’s
Vic Rawlings & Howard Stelzer
$12.99
This oddly punctuated album of studio compositions for modified cello, open-circuit electronics, cassette tapes, and other detritus was retrieved from Intransitive’s climate-controlled vaults after carefully aging for more than six years. “By My Side” came about at a time when Vic Rawlings and I were performing lots of duo concerts, and felt that we were pushing ourselves into some strange, exciting territory. We decided to capture what we were doing in a “real” studio, rather than simply record concerts in situ as best as we could… which at the time, would probably have meant putting one stereo mic in the room and hoping for the best. Two days of improvisations in Jesse Kudler‘s attic studio were sculpted and massaged over several intense days until this album emerged. And then… nothing happened. We’re not sure why. The subject of publishing this album would come up every now and then. Every time I listened back to the music, I’d think, “Hm, this is pretty weird stuff. I should put it out.” Years later, the rapid fluctuations between narrative tease, passages of high-velocity throttle, and grotesque emptiness seem just as fresh and bafflingly exciting to us as they did when we recorded them.
Rawlings and Stelzer are two members of the large ensemble The BSC, along with their compatriots nmperign, Mike Bullock, Chris Cooper (Fat Worm of Error, Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase), James Coleman, and Liz Tonne. When he isn’t teaching rock guitar to kids in the suburbs, Rawlings builds electronic instruments, makes a mess of a perfectly nice cello, and performs in the groups N.R.A. (with Ricardo Aria and Tatsuya Nakatani) and Mawja (with Mazen Kerbaj and Mike Bullock). Stelzer is tired of writing about himself in the third person, so today he won’t do it.
Vic Rawlings & Howard Stelzer “By My Side; I am Your’s” CDr by Intransitive Recordings
Praise for By My Side; I Am Your’s:
“With Rawlings, Stelzer stretches his cassette manipulations even further. He seems to match Rawlings’s desire to move past the “musical” side of his tools and get at their physical workings. So tape-speed manipulation and the grind of tape heads feature prominently, just as Rawlings taps into the primal electrical signals of his devices for some gnarly high-frequencies. The cello works as a sort of earthy counterpoint to the more fragmented electronics, but it too is all surface and texture, rough-hewn ones at that… the atmosphere here is one of research and discovery.” – Paris Transatlantic
“Having known & having seen these guys individually on the regular for a good decade+, but never having them in this formation, the music here is something of a surprise; it’s neither Vic’s austere minimalism punctuated with high bursts of sine-stone static, nor Howie’s relentlessly churning tape-warble … but in fact a more turn-based music, with each dovetailing through sequences of their respective sounds at a “composerly” pace … very nice stuff, and a great recording (i.e. a blend of the duo’s electronic tones & the actual acoustic presence of their instruments push-button interfaces)” – Mimaroglu Music Sales
“Both Stelzer and Rawlings take turns in letting their material breathe, take shape and gentle move away. Or pull out together, a stroke of noise, like painting flying around, smeared on the canvas. A wild affair.” – Vital Weekly
