the music on "cold storage" was recorded at my zwischenraum recording space on 8 november, 2007, during my final rehearsals for the gasometer concert that would take place on 10 november, 2007. when i learned about the concert i was immediately nervous as it had been a dream of mine to play a concert inside the gasometer, ever after having seen french experimentalists of lightwave there in 1996. lightwave were very important as an influence when my own band, which was later to become known as [´ramp], was founded in 1996.
i guess this was my best-rehearsed concert that far. all i did afterwards was tweaking the recordings a bit to make up for the lack of "gasometer" ambience as i decided not to use too much canned reverb for the concert. i thought this was something the gasometer itself should add (and it did, indeed…).
the gasometer is a huge abandoned gas tank, roughly 120 metres in height and 70 metres in diametre. it was used from 1927 to 1985 as a giant storage device for industrial gas which was a by-product of the steel plant nearby. the steel plant shut its doors for good in 1985, and the entire industrial area around it underwent a considerable change. today, one of europe´s biggest shopping centres (or "malls" forms the new heart of the city of oberhausen, with the gasometer turned into an enormous exhibition space for contemporary art (with artists like christo, bill viola, and others exhibiting their installations there).
the concert recording itself was released earlier in 2008 as "cryotainer – music for gasometers". here, you´ve got a different take on it. musically, it is of course similar to what i played inside the huge gas tun, but structurally it is slightly different. the ambient sound of the gasometer itself is – of course – missing, too.
"cold storage" is a great way to get an impression of how the gasometer concert felt. if you missed out on "cryotainer" this recording will at least give you an impression of the music performed there but it will in no way make the "cryotainer" album become redundant as both setting and concert were totally unique.
thanks to all supporters world-wide.
Stephen
"Wer sich am kommerziellen Musikgeschmack orientiert, dient der Reaktion." (Einstürzende Neubauten, 1981)
Beiträge: 399 Ort: Pudding City, Eastern Westphalia Eingetreten: 25.02.07
Eingetragen auf 11-10-2008 11:21
For those who haven´t listened to it yet (or have no idea as to what to expect), here´s a review from e/i mag blog:
"Stephen Parsick’s name on its own probably doesn’t send tongues wagging, but it damn well should. He and his cohort have coined the term “doombient” in a valiant attempt to describe what they produce—most notably as the duo Ramp with fellow doombienteer Frank Makowski—but Parsick solo pushes enough envelopes to scatter any sort of catch-all categorizations to the four winds. Hatched in jet-black clamshell cases, both Cryotainer and Fuzzstars (released in ridiculously limited editions of only 25 each) plumb uncharted depths of interstellar hell, massed sonic choirs of great drones belching their oratory incantations from the centers of spatial chambers sucked dry of air. Subtitled “Music for Gasometers,” and recorded in front of a spellbound audience whose disembodied grunts and twitches act like unmoored spirits that Parsick weaves into the haunted mix, Cryotainer challenges even the hoariest of genre kingpins (Lull, Final, Sleep Research Facility) to seek refuge. Though spread out over eight tracks, the music cycles endlessly decaying refrains as one long monolithic journey through the void, deepcore synths charting slow, circular, whispery progressions. Based on improvisations wrought during rehearsals for some planetarium shows in Germany, Fuzzstars plots similarly isolationist trajectories. Low end vibrations shore up the sounds of distant chiming metals, synths channel the dying wavelengths of unseen pulsars, thick tonal clusters ebb and flow in a flux of zero gravity. Altering psychic states, suspending your time sense, and basically actualizing the abject terror of galactic solipsism, Parsick’s abstractions aren’t for those too squeamish to make the necessary existential leaps. The rest need seek out these objets d’sombre at once or risk missing out at their own peril. DARREN BERGSTEIN • www.parsick.com"
Check http://www.eiaudioverite.blogspot.com/ for more info.
Thanks for reading,
Stephen.
"Wer sich am kommerziellen Musikgeschmack orientiert, dient der Reaktion." (Einstürzende Neubauten, 1981)
forms the new heart of the city of oberhausen, with the gasometer turned into an enormous exhibition space for contemporary art (with artists like christo, bill viola, and others exhibiting their installations there).
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