Breathing Landscape, by Leslee Smucker

Breathing Landscape

by Leslee Smucker

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1.	air placed formally 06:37	buy track
2.	fixed hills 04:06	buy track
3.	beneath this still hand 04:47	buy track
4.	wind leans 03:38	buy track
5.	DayMoon 04:55	buy track
6.	but a bird 04:59	buy track
7.	armored 03:45	buy track
8.	continuing underground 05:31	buy track
9.	in briefest transit 04:59	buy track
10.	Nothing crossed the field 03:43	buy track

about

Recorded in an abandoned water tank in rural northwest Colorado and inspired by Muriel Rukeyser’s circa-1935 poem of the same name, violinist Leslee Smucker explores the range and saturation of intense natural reverb on Breathing Landscape. The artist pushes her instrument to the limit –by turns percussive, sweeping, and scraping– and, on several tracks, utilizes her own voice as well, resulting in an album that combines breathtaking beauty and visceral texture. Leaning into the meditative quality being present in one moment can provide, this is music you can feel on your skin, calling out from our decomposing modernity into the indifferent sky above. Conjuring deep time but captured in one day, the album is simultaneously immediate and vaporous, primeval-sounding yet unapologetically modern.

When you travel out of the mountains down into the rangelands of what we know today as western Colorado, the horizon opens up to reveal an ancient and scarred land. Cell phone coverage is spotty at best and towns are sparse. Time escapes our efforts to contain it and is instead etched into the hot, dry canyons. Approaching The Tank, outside the settlement of Rangely, oil pumps work ceaselessly on the other side of the gravel road, extracting a grim future. Inside The Tank it is 20 degrees warmer than outside, a zone of strange harmonics, exchanges of sound and stillness, and explorations of landscapes both exterior and interior. In what she describes as a "sauna of sound", Smucker "was transported by the reverberation to another realm. Birds and trucks passed outside, while the wind was an integral part to the sound making."

"Named after a 1930s poem by Muriel Rukeyser, the album titles its tracks with fragments of verse. The speaker of the poem lies in the sun, connected to the landscape but seemingly detached from their human peers. The patterned repetition (still/still, fixed/fixed, each/each) suggests a circling back of ideas. This is matched by Smucker’s violin, which can feel like a process of undecided thought. It sounds out, pauses until silence, and begins pondering once again. 'Silence hangs in the air', curiously, is not a line Smucker recycles. It is not silence but sound that reverberates here. The most fitting title, 'continuing underground', is given to a subterranean, otherworldly piece. Sharp notes are swallowed up by insistent waves of drones, which accrue extra energy in the vacuumous space." – Samuel Rogers, A Closer Listen

"Bowing and scraping, she concentrates on bright, glassy harmonics that reverberate across the space, not so much playing as unleashing them, the same way a fierce wind uproots dust and sends it aloft in clouds and twisters." – Philip Sherburne (Futurism Restated)

"Breathing Landscape glides into the legacy of minimalism but it's a record full of brash precision, one punctuated by flashes of an almost percussive force from the violin. Uniquely created in a specific environment, the album works through a cool combination of location and musician." – Glenn Griffiths (A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed)

"Don’t listen to this music—just feel it. I’m no anatomist, but there must be some point where your ears connect to your tingling spine. At first, I decided that this music deserved to be the soundtrack to a horror film, but then I started relaxing in the warmth of its haunted house effects. And give credit to the abandoned water tower where it was recorded—I don’t think there is a digital software package that can recreate that sound." – Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker)

credits

released January 26, 2024

Composed and Performed by Leslee Smucker
Engineered by Samantha Wade and Michael Van Wagoner
Mastered by Jason Powers
Graphic Design by Studio Bernhardt
Cover artwork by Leslee Smucker

Bio: Violinist Leslee Smucker (US/NL) incorporates voice, synthesizers, electronics, film, and poetry into her artistic works. Her expressive modes range from electroacoustic and live acoustic pieces, to compositions for herself and others, and concerts featuring various musical, filmic, poetic, and artistic elements. Smucker is an accomplished composer and performer, having received commissions from renowned organizations such as Gaudeamus Muziekweek and Rewire Festival. Her compositions have been performed at prestigious festivals like the Grachtenfestival, Niewe Noten, Gaudeamus Muziekweek. Her electroacoustic works have been performed at Autumn Festival in Brussels, Institute of Sonology, and Wavefield Synthesis Festival in Den Haag. One notable achievement was a commission by Rewire Festival to create a sensory sensitive composition called Worlds Within which premiered at Rewire Festival 2023 and opened for Midori Takada for Rewire x Korzo. Smucker has also performed solo projects at notable venues like Association Philomuses in Paris, Center for New Music in San Francisco, and Studio LOOS. She has performed solo works in Andriessen Festival in Arnhem, Interference Series in Flagstaff, Scottish Library's Cantos Project, and the Contemporary Heritage Symposium. She was a Guest Composer at EMS Stockholm in 2023 where she worked with their Serge and multi-channel systems. Currently, Smucker is engaged in an artistic research project titled "buzzing strings/resonant beauty" at Studio LOOS. This ongoing endeavor challenges conventional notions of beauty by creating prepared violins and composing works specifically for prepared instruments.

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Leslee Smucker The Hague, Netherlands

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