All By Compass Am I (De)Composed, by Ross Birdwise

All By Compass Am I (De)Composed

by Ross Birdwise

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Ross Birdwise | Tatsuhisa Yamamoto | Chemiefaserwerk & Metaxas
Limited bundle of all three tapes in a special price, coming in a beautiful 'dasa tapes' pouch. Only 25 sets available. We will email you the download codes for the tapes as soon as you make the purchase.

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Limited Edition Cassette
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Pro-dubbed cassette. Limited to 60 copies.

Includes unlimited streaming of All By Compass Am I (De)Composed via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	2020 Was a Hard Year 02:41	buy track
2.	2021 (Branching Structures) 05:05	buy track
3.	Hypnagogic Hangover 04:14	buy track
4.	Homecoming 03:39	buy track
5.	Childhood Toy 00:29	buy track
6.	10th Variation 02:48	buy track
7.	Quadriptych (.....To Distribute in Space; To Order in Time...) 03:22	buy track
8.	Almost Functional 04:01	buy track
9.	Incommensurable Relationships (Urgency, Stasis, Nostalgia) 03:02	buy track
10.	Awkward Movements 02:05	buy track
11.	Handmade in Ableton Live (Klangfarbenmelodie) 01:44	buy track
12.	Shifting Yet Slanted Power Dynamics 01:50	buy track
13.	Vines 02:32	buy track
14.	1997 (Dejected) 04:55	buy track
15.	Fake Tapes 02:29	buy track
16.	A Universal System of Deformation 02:40	buy track
17.	Through Warped Glass 01:11	buy track
18.	Trauma Bomb (Broken Counterpoint, Negative Afterimage) 05:23	buy track

about

Artist Notes:

Most tracks on this album are partially composed with irregularized yet rotating processes, built on an unseen and only occasionally heard overarching framework of chord changes or hidden melodies which become the basis for other, contrapuntally arranged melodies and harmonies.

The rotating processes are in some ways similar to didactic musical exercises one could follow to write a canon, however instead of producing shorter staggered repeating lines, the processes create long differentiated yet interrelated lines. Imperfect, drawn out, not quite rounds. In a certain sense, one is always hearing a different aspect of the same, often totally hidden, repeating part in a paradoxical state of continual variation.

Further complicating matters, these processes are built on irregularized temporal grids, so there is a deep asymmetry at multiple levels in many of the compositions, both vertically and horizontally.

The sounds that fill up these grids are derived from a variety of processes and sources, such as sine waves, samples of string quartets and percussion instruments, granular synthesis, cassette recording and tape manipulation and other things, essentially a mixture of what we could call digital and analog, reductively speaking. In some cases I deliberately blurred or made hybrids out of digital and analog sounds. The sounds you hear utilized myriad processes in how they came to be, and how they came to become.

Other concerns are problematizing, complicating or confusing categories and distinctions such as static vs dynamic, linear vs non-linear, syncopation vs ‘free’ time, and the triple relation between pre-existing forms, formlessness, and the emergence of the new. I am also trying to evoke inaudible forces, and model an abstract sonic image of a vital, chaotic world traversed by the forces of capitalism, and various histories and ideologies, as well as the subjective emotional states that one endures in life’s quotidian struggles.

Bio:

Ross Birdwise is a Vancouver-based musician and visual artist. Much of his recent electronic music, whether beatless noise, or some sort of beat driven experimental music or free improvisation, is concerned with the deliberate manipulation of the listener’s sense of time and space and is concerned with disrupting or dequantizing the quantized grid that underlies much electronic music to attempt to create musical space-times that are alternately fluid, lurching, malfunctioning, awkward, violent or organic. Much of his video work has been similarly concerned with addressing issues around space and time, and time-based media itself, attempting to explore time and space in a philosophical but also visceral way.
Ross is also free improvising vocalist who deploys extended techniques, electronic manipulations, and throat-singing in his work.

credits

released May 28, 2022

Dusted Magazine Review:

''It’s difficult to surmise which came first: Ross Birdwise’s career as an artist or his tenure as a musician. Both creative tendrils seem to have erupted and grown together. He laces his video work with electronic soundscapes, and his musical output carries an ever-present conceptual heft. It doesn’t really matter which outlet was the prime motivation for Birdwise, as they melt into each other in his world. His music, like his art, seeks to rupture the space-time continuum as observed by his audience. Prepare to be jarred, confounded, and disoriented when you experience his work. There are no linear pathways through Birdwise’s compositions.

In All by Compass Am I (De)Composed, Birdwise is at his most process-based and conceptual. The artist, who is already known for fracturing the grid-based bedrock of electronic music, employs what he refers to as “irregularized yet rotating processes,” which he uses to morph and juxtapose melodic and harmonic patterns into an ever-evolving slurry. This sonic primordial soup births new and exciting intervals and progressions that are never quite “right.” There is always an uneasy sense of the uncanny, more so than on previous Birdwise outings. The generative nature of these compositions leaves the listener questioning how much randomization is at play. Birdwise’s fractalized patterns aren’t random at all, and that is what’s so unnerving. There’s repetition at play, but the repeating segments are never exactly the same, and this is just plain weird.

Birdwise also applies unique processes to the sonic material he uses, blending analog and digital, acoustic and electronic, instrumental and acousmatic sources. It is practically impossible to discern what is an instrument and what is a sample. What sounds like a saxophone on “2020 Was a Hard Year” and “2021 (Branching Structures)” might actually be a manipulated guitar for all we know. The stumbling nature of the melody, along with the surrounding miasma of clicks, hisses, howls and shrieks adds to the confusion.

As disorienting as All by Compass Am I (De)Composed may be, the discombobulation is rewarding. The nearly constant syncopation conjures many pleasurable moments of anticipation. The twinkling chime-like tones that form the backdrop of “Hypnagogic Hangover,” for example, appear and disappear behind bursts of undifferentiated sound, resembling a starry sky temporarily obscured by dark grey clouds. This image repeats frequently in various forms, ratcheting up the suspense as the album unfolds, culminating in the subtle “Trauma Bomb (Broken Counterpoint, Negative Afterimage.” After experiencing this record, it is apparent that Birdwise’s compass is spinning uncontrollably, but that’s okay. The dizziness he creates is captivating. ''

Bryon Hayes

Recored mixed and mastered by Ross Birdwise
Artwork by Savvas Metaxas
Cover Design by Nikos Kostopoulos @phéno

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Dasa Tapes Greece

Dasa Tapes is a limited editions cassette label which aims to explore the unexpected makings and hearings of experimental music.
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