Transmissions

A four-record anthology of Soundwalk Collective. Hertzian frequencies, radio interceptions, fragments of voices, singing sands, shortwave transmissions, archival recordings, vanished worlds, chaotic harmonies, daunting moments of confusion, an audible entropy, elation, and an endless search for beauty into chaos. The box set gathers four previously unreleased studio compositions by the New York and Berlin-based group of artists-musicians: Ulysses Syndrome, Medea, Empty Quarter, and Bessarabia, and a booklet including "Black-Winged Night", an essay by musician and writer David Toop, and a conversation between Soundwalk Collective and Dischi Fantom founder, Massimo Torrigiani. The four compositions - mastered by Stefan Betke - are the result of extensive journeys and field recordings in the Mediterranean basin, the Black Sea, the Rub' al Khali Desert, and the region around Odessa, once known as Bessarabia. An international genre-bending group of artists-musicians with studios in New York City and Berlin, the three members of Soundwalk Collective (Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli, and Kamran Sadeghi) bound in Manhattan to produce concept albums, sound installations, and live performances, often in collaboration with other artists, musicians, and writers. Selected tracks from Transmissions are being broadcast internationally as part of Every Time A Ear Di Soun, the radio program of documenta14, curated by Adam Szymiczyk. The program includes a headphone installation in the Press and Information Centre in Kassel, designed by Aristide Antonas, and in the ASFA Library in Athens. An excerpt from the included essay by David Toop: "I hear this displacement of refrains. I am not fixed within signs but adrift within signals. Like a bat or a dolphin, I hear scanned frequencies otherwise inaudible to my human limitations and these voices and tones captured from the aether seem to me to
be our equivalent of those voices of gods who spoke 'words that flew'; music asserts it's regional and cultural affiliations and yet at the same time it drifts unmoored
in the ocean of sound." Graphic design by Fabrizio Radaelli; Photography by Stephan Crasneanscki; Printed and assembled in Italy by Grafiche Antiga. Record pressing: Optimal Media, Germany; Mastering by Stefan Betke at -Scape Mastering, Berlin; 160 gram vinyl; Edition of 300.