Hintergrund - Nemesis Digital Release

Album Cover

I'm happy to say that the new Hintergrund album, 'Nemesis', our second release is finished and is now available for free to stream and download. I'd like to say a few things regarding details about the albums production and completion.

What we were able to accomplish with 'Nemesis' encompasses a much more expansive sonic range than our previous effort, Signal Blister. The sounds range from crushing walls of dense distortion and feedback, to screeching oscillation, to airy and colorful ambience. One of the beautiful things about noise and the likes of experimental music is the process, which many times is a wholly improvised matter that always leaves room for the possibility of failure and spontaneity, an aspect that is unfortunately all too often alien to music. In noise this additional element played a large role in how the album was created. We worked with what we had at the time; a broken guitar, an old broken karaoke microphone, prepared saxophone, circuit bent electronics, and whatever else we could find that we felt was worth recording. Much like the sound of 'Nemesis' the instrumentation directly reflects this brokenness. I think it is safe to say that, for me at least that 'Nemesis' is not only to be heard as a piece of music but to be seen as being representative of an exercise in experimentation, our instruments not simply being used as they were intended to be but rather used as an extension of our collective ideas, improvised and elaborated on in that moment.

From this point on I will be focusing on putting together the artwork for a physical release of the album. You can stream and download 'Nemesis' at the links provided below. Enjoy.

Download Nemesis Here

Also, Brian recently finished his latest solo effort under the name Glasslung entitled 'New Martyrs'. You can download and stream that here: Sleeping Glass.

Links:

Nemesis on Last.fm

Brian Sopher on Soundcloud

Tyler Thompson on Soundcloud

Moosick Records

Illustrations For New Hintergrund Album

Exterior Artwork

During the summer of last year my good friend Brian Sopher and I got together for a jam session in which we spent time making noises, drones, and generally experimenting. Out of these freeform jam sessions our experimentation evolved into what is now known as the drone / noise duo Hintergrund. We released our first album Signal Blister during the summer of last year. Sometime back in January nearing the end of my winter break away from school Brian and I got together once again to record with no specific goal in mind before departing back to our respective colleges. Early in the first weeks of summer we met up to finish what we had started and to say the least, having given multiple listens, I'm pretty pleased with the results. What we were able to achieve is much more diverse than what can be heard on our first full length, Signal Blister.

Interior Artwork

The artwork is nearing completion. The two images seen above, that of the interior and exterior spreads are complete. All that is necessary now is the addition of type and the application of color.

As I have stated in past posts I believe the artwork is a crucial part, perhaps even on an equal level as the music in which it accompanies. Sometimes the artwork can determine whether or not I actually purchase an album whereas I could simply download it for free. Not only is it important in that aspect but also reflectively. I believe the artwork should serve a purpose not separate from the music but rather compliment the music visually in a way that reflects the mood, the concept, and emotions derived from it. With that said the artwork I have begun working on can be looked at as my interpretation of the sounds on this album in a visual form; fragmented, disjointed, chaotic, and broken which needless to say are a few words that essentially summarize the music that Brian and I have created together sonically in a visual sense.

On Repeat: Pigeon Breeders - Luminous Debris, Teotl Expansion - P:1, Heccra - The Last Weekend of Summer, White Suns - Sinews

Choice Cinema: David Lynch - 'Mulholland Drive' and 'Blue Velvet'

Good Reads: Mark Z. Danielewski - 'House Of Leaves'

Blogs / Sites: The League of Movable Type, Fonts of Chaos

Hintergrund - Signal Blister Physical Release

Album Cover

Over the summer of 2011 friend and fellow musician Brian Sopher and I released a full length album entitled Signal Blister under the name Hintergrund consisting of improvised compositions created utilizing treated guitar, synth, a cheap broken microphone and plenty of digital processing. The music on the release is comprised of seven somewhat long droning compositions interlaced with traces of melody and rhythm all buried beneath layers of tectonic ever shifting walls of distortion and colorful textures.

Previously, I had written several blog posts including information as well as images and samples from the album. The album artwork is derived from a series of edited photographs of an abandoned factory I shot during the production of the album. One of my favorite aspects of purchasing a piece of music in a physical format, whether it be a CD or vinyl copy has been the artwork that accompanies it, something that gave me a reason to buy it as oppose to simply downloading a digital copy or pirating it. The artwork often times provides a deeper look into the music, sometimes exemplifying a more personal aspect of the music that wouldn't be present otherwise. I feel as though the artwork that accompanies the album does well in visually representing the sounds within the recordings, providing images to stimulate the listener; this idea of layers of paint and concrete having been removed, decayed, weathered, and worn away to reveal an underlying surface, much like the sounds on Signal Blister. The physical copies of the album were finished in October of last year and are handmade, therefore limited to only thirteen unnumbered copies, all of which will be given away to close friends and other desirables. Above is a cropped image of the album artwork and below is the physical release displaying the gatefold style packaging as well as the CD and sleeve. There is a link provided below to a free download of the album in 320 kbps which includes the artwork. Enjoy.

Thanks goes to Kyle Plaskon for photographing the album packaging. You can check out more of his photography here.

Check out the Last.fm page

Brian Sopher on Soundcloud

Tyler Thompson on Soundcloud

Click here to download

On Repeat: Orphan School - Secret Admirer, Burial - Kindred EP, Mustapha Mond - Keeping Secrets, Ben Frost - Discography

Choice Cinema: Wim Wenders 'Wings of Desire',  Jim Jarmusch 'Stranger Than Paradise'

Hintergrund - Half Halo / Antithesis

Antithesis

Half Halo

Summer is coming slowly to a close as fall inches closer with each passing day. I believe many of us like to think of the seasons in relation to the basic emotions holiday cliches make us want to believe in. Fall, being the time off year I am most fond is a season I feel indifferently, apathetically toward. To me it represents a time of passing on. For nearly all of us death is indeed a negative occurrence, however, in this context I tend to not think of it in a negative way at all. For me it evokes the sense of a slow and natural death. It is the last breath for summer but for some of us it will be our first. This whole idea of other things passing on and giving life to the still living is something that interests me. It seems ironic how the occurrence of death, a thing many react to so negatively is something that keeps us alive. It is not necessarily a positive thing for those left behind but it is welcome, it is natural and if one looks hard enough there is color beneath all of the gray.

Featured below are two selections from Signal Blister; a project that Brian Sopher and I have been collaborating on over the course of the past few weeks under the name Hintergrund. Although absent of any preconceived concept there is a distinct mood that runs throughout the album. "Half Halo" is filled with fluttering synth sounds while swells of distorted guitar linger, rising and falling in the background. "Antithesis" comes in the form of a wave of sound that washes over the listener, a sense of structure begins to surface as the song progresses before fading out in a hollow sounding haze. The album has a layered and rather noisy feel, potentially abrasive to some but if one looks past the layers of dense sound melodies can be found hiding underneath.

The images pictured above are a series of photographs I took to use for packaging art. I believe the concept of the photographs follow the mood of the music well. Both of the buildings pictured are powerful structures, each shot from a ground perspective to entail that these structures are threateningly towering over them. Stark cracks of worn gray concrete show through stripped white paint. It is almost otherworldly, reminiscent of some distant world. The photographs pictured above follow the same loosely applied principle/poor analogy. Most of the effect were achieved by dropping the vibrance and bringing the color up slightly in saturation so that it looks as though it is fading away from years of poor weather. I'm currently working on putting together a physical CD version of the album including packaging, layout and photography. 

End your summer and start the fall season with these two tracks. More on the packaging and full album soon. Until then give it a listen, let me know what you think and feel free to let Brian know as well.

-Later

Brian Sopher:

Blogspot: http://sleepingglass.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @bsophs

Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/briansopher

Music Review: http://incurablyoptimistic.blogspot.com/

 Hintergrund - Half Halo by Tyler.Thompson 

 Hintergrund - Antithesis by Tyler.Thompson 

On Repeat: Balam Acab - "Wander / Wonder", Yellow Swans - "Going Places", Nadja - "Radiance of Shadows", Defiance, Ohio - "Share What Ya Got".