Catalog number: LTD040
Release date: November 18, 2022
Format: Cassette
Edition size: 75
Following previous releases on Dear Life Records, JR Samuels (Friendship, 2nd Grade) delivers SPASM, a work of solo improvisation in keeping with the theme of our autumn 2022 batch. An attempt to render unfiltered thought into an uncanny sound palate both alien and welcoming, SPASM captures output from the wandering mind as articulated through non-idiomatic acoustic guitar playing and tethered MIDI expression, yielding a dense interior portrait, defiant in its strangeness, but disarming in its immediacy. Unrehearsed performance reframed as an ongoing quest for salvation from – and exorcism of – pain both physical and communal, as an act of sensemaking against an endless stream of nonsense input and violent compulsion. What better to counter a dulled and overwhelmed set of senses than something wholly other? And where better to find it than within? Venture with us further into the unlit corners of the self, in search of new sound.
Music by JR Samuels.
Engineering and mixing by Lucas Knapp.
Artwork by Aaron Goldstein.