Tagged with " Indian Queen Records"
Smokey Emery - ‘Quartz’ EP
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If you look closely at the artwork for Smokey Emery‘s most recent EP Quartz, you’ll see that it is a collage made up of images from various terrible disasters. Plane crashes, car wrecks, fires—is that a volcano? And yet with all of that carnage, it’s still pleasing to look at in the way that Daniel Hipolito has arranged it. That sort of attention to detail speaks to the EP itself, a collection of ambient drone pieces made up of carefully selected loops, samples, and recordings that have then been constructed into gorgeous sound collages of their own. The first time I listened to the EP on proper headphones, it swallowed me up. Daniel has established a sound that is cavernous yet claustrophobic and is lonely as it is timeless. Like lost transmissions being emitted from some long abandoned hotel, if you listen closely you can hear snatches of the music these samples used to be. It’s a haunting experience, but one that is totally entrancing. I reached out to Daniel to see what he had to say about the EP. Here’s what he responded with:
Smokey Emery is an ongoing and evolving music project since 1993. I use tape machines to record and manipulate both performed and found sound. The EP was recorded by my friend Guy Taylor at his home studio here in Austin, live to computer. Jon (from Silent Land Time Machine, Lumens. and Amasa*Gana) was nice enough to release it as a vinyl. The ‘Quartz’ EP is a companion to a yet-unreleased LP ‘Quartz And Decay’, which contains the remaining movements of the piece. Quartz is the second most common mineral in the crust of the planet Earth and is piezoelectric. It releases a charge under pressure and is essential to electronics as we know them. Around central Texas you can find it everywhere: in the dirt, at the edges of roads, paths, parking lots. There are theories of magnetic atmospheric resonance dubbed the ‘Violet Crown’ regarding the area, supposedly connected to the large amount of quartz in the area, said to influence the vivid coloring and qualities of the dusk and dawn.
The Quartz EP is available both digitally as well as on 7″ vinyl from Austin label Indian Queen Records.
