Category: releases

Hi all, excited to share this before the year comes to a close. Flocking 23 is a collection of recordings assembled from live sampler performances from the shows I played in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Madison in the fall of 2023. No step sequencing. No ‘pressing play’. Just me and a sampler. I asked my friend Josh Mason if he wanted to take a stab at some art and I’m happy it’s all come together.

As normal, you can download this in MP3 and WAV format if you go to my releases page. Feel free to send some money my way if that’s important, it’s certainly appreciated, but don’t feel it’s necessary. Otherwise, if you want to sample or purchase through Bandcamp, it’s available there too. Info and words from Josh below his art.

Info

1. fifteen
2. optical_flow
3. lodest
4. lodest_tape
5. sz_fa
6. sz_fa_tape
7. 23_sampleref

23.09 develop
23.10 record
23.11 breathe
23.12 edit
24.01 sweeten
24.02 breathe
24.03 re-sweeten
24.12 art

Assembled from live sampler performances from the following shows:

23.10.19 @ tritriangle, chicago, il, usa
23.10.20 @ the jazz gallery, milwaukee, wi usa
23.10.21 @ communication, madison, wi usa

Sound by Connor Bell
Sweetening by Greg Davis
Art by Josh Mason

Words from Josh:

i was thinking about when connor had asked me to make some digital flyers for a run of shows he was playing in the midwest (which ended up being the source material for this release) and it reminded me of all the hours i spent in kinkos as a younger person over the years making flyers for shows, and given that i wanted to do something with my hands for this (and eschew the speed of digital construction almost entirely, which he graciously tolerated over too long a time period) i decided to still work with “photocopiers” by employing toner transfers with solvents in order to create an assemblage of what felt like handbills (and was loosely, or subconsciously influenced, by constructivist works) and took it a step further by drawing parallels to the angularity of the flocking material…hard cuts, waveform discontinuities, etc.

Hi all, I spent some time this year working on more ‘horn’ recordings. Strangely, these sort of evolved into duet recordings. Not my intention, but it felt right and I’ve increasingly learned to work as intuitively as possible. Many thanks to Tim Barnes for cultivating that mindset within me.

If you navigate over to the ‘releases’ page, there is a direct zip link at the bottom which includes 320 kbps MP3s and 24/96 WAVs, or you can check it out on Bandcamp. Feel free to Paypal me at shedding.sounds@gmail.com if you’d like to throw me some money. Or not. It’s never been about that. Thanks to my friends for being involved. Art and info below.

Connor Bell – sound
Guy Birkin – art
Josh Mason – text layout
Billy Gomberg – words

This turned into a series of duets, but the idea is the same, so the text Billy wrote for “This Is My Horn, Vol. 1” remains a good summary of what I’m trying to do:

Most musicians have a passion for listening that matches their passion for playing. Tracing the influences and reflections that end up on a single recording can be a messy task if we commit to real geography of the phenomenon, instead of the poetic, abstracted interpretation we end up listening to and weaving into our own archives.

Connor Bell has been practicing and playing and releasing music for a while (as Shedding and in various bands), and on TIMH he connects his own listener’s passion and musician’s commitment into process and product. Working from his love of solo jazz recordings, Connor approached a design of his synthesizer as something capable of gestures that move through texture and a free sense of melody. An instrument he can play, a language we hear and start to understand.

Leaning back into a wistful bearing on easy tempo solos, Connor’s performance finds overlays of timbre like mutated multiphonics, resisting calm while gathering a soft neon glow as edges appear, suddenly bristling or momentarily melancholy. Given his intention, Connor’s solos hold an inviting space to a listener – robust and skilled, this is deceptively complex music keeping a room warm for you.