Showcase: A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN

This Tuesday, 27 September 2011 at 6pm:
Showcase with
A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN

A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN BIOGRAPHY
content: ‘A Winged Victory For the Sullen’ is the first installment of the new collaboration between Stars of the Lid founder Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie and composer Dustin O’Halloran. The duo agreed to leave their normal home studio comfort zone and develop the recordings with the help of large acoustic spaces, and to hunt down a selection of 9ft grand pianos that had the ability to deliver extreme sonic low end. Other traditional instrumentation was used including
string quartet, French horn, and bassoon, but always juxtaposed is the sound of drifting guitar washed melodies. The recordings began in one late night session in the famed Grunewald Church in west Berlin on a 1950s imperial Boesendorfer piano and strings were added in the historic East Berlin DDR radio studios along the River Spree. One last final session in a private studio deep in the norther cusp of Italy on a handmade Fazioli piano, and the final mixes took place in a 17th century villa near Ferrara, Italy, with the assistance of Francesco Donadello. All songs were processed completely analogue straight to magnetic tape. Their
secret to harvesting new melodic structures from the thin air of existence was for the duo to push themselves to live dangerously, realizing that clear thinking at the wrong moment could stifle the compositions. The final result is seven landscapes of harmonic replicating ingemination. In “Requiem for the Static King Part 1” (created in memory of the untimely passing of Mark Linkous) they have taken the age old idea of a string quartet and then shot it out a cannon to reveal exquisite
new levels of mellow bliss. Of the 13 minute track “Symphony Pathétique”, Wiltzie says “after almost 20 years of struggling to create interesting ambient drone music, I feel like I have finally figured out what I am doing”. Notable guest musicians include Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, and violinist Peter Broderick. ‘A Winged Victory for the Sullen’ is not a side project. This is the future of the late night record you have always dreamed of.
context: On May 24th 2007, in Bologna, Italy, Adam was on tour and playing with the late Mark Linkous & his beloved Sparklehorse, on what would be their final European tour. That night Adam invited friend and colleague Francesco Donadello to see the concert, and Francesco’s guest this evening was composer Dustin O’Halloran. Through a strange twist of backstage conversations surrounding passport cache conundrums, and love of Italian gastronomy, a curious friendship began that now has brought forth an offspring of harmonic robitussinal compositions for the world to savour.
track listing:
1. We Played Some Open Chords and Rejoiced, For The Earth Had Circled the
Sun Yet Another Year 2. Requiem For the Static King Part One 3. Requiem For
the Static King Part Two 4. Minuet For A Cheap Piano Number Two 5. Steep Hills
of Vicodin Tears 6. A Symphony Pathetique 7. All Farewells are Sudden

RELEASE DATES: ERASED TAPES:SEPT. 8 (EU) SEPT.11 (UK)
KRANKY: SEPT.12 (NORTH AMERICA)

Free entrance!