glass-mastered CD in gatefold slipcase available from Full Spectrum Records (edition of 150)
fullspectrumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/wind-wound
From the liner notes:
The giant horn I used to compose Wind Wound first entered my life in late 2020. I’d given a Zoom talk to a sound class at the Halifax art college NSCAD. During the Q & A, a student named Austin Denman told me about this ten-foot steel horn he was building. Later, he sent me videos of him firing metal and piecing the horn together. This commanding and beautiful instrument immediately captivated me. Austin kept in touch and, to my surprise, eventually offered me his creation. Apparently, my jaw harp playing had convinced him that I was a strange enough musician to breathe life into his one-of-a-kind steel horn.
Austin built his horn in the style of a Swiss or German alphorn (or alpenhorn)—a long, valveless natural horn that is manipulated entirely by the player’s embouchure and air pressure. Such horns can only sound notes from the harmonic series (like a bugle or jaw harp). Traditional alphorns are made of wood, not steel, and they’re typically constructed by master craftspeople who spend a lifetime perfecting the nuances of this unique labrophone. I would quickly learn that the instrument gifted to me did not necessarily conform to the acoustic or physical specifications of the traditional instrument. It did, however, possess radical qualities all its own. After a week or so of playing the steel horn, I started discovering these idiosyncrasies. There were leaks, barbs, and weird dents in the metal that warped the tones. I started wrapping duct tape around the horn to better seal it. I used various glues as well. Each time I made a repair, the horn’s sound changed. Each time I carried it from my studio to my house, its sound changed. Heat, humidity, the angle at which it was played, even the surface on which it rested—all changed the sound, sometimes dramatically. The horn truly was a freak instrument that sang like no other. I was totally intrigued.
I played the horn off and on during 2021. I could hit a few notes, but I mostly used it to generate noise. One of my early examples of this was captured during an online concert for Feeding Tube Records’ QuaranTunes Series. My final piece for that performance was called “New Horn”, and it involved lots of screaming through the tube and some fart noises as well. The track ended up on a limited-edition lathe of the concert, released by the label.
I started taking the horn more seriously in October 2021, when I began a routine of playing the thing for 15-30 minutes each morning. And I recorded many of those sessions. I mostly played the harmonics, which on this horn and/or via my lips tend to be sour in a way I quite enjoy. As the days went on, and my embouchure improved, my range increased—although, I feel like the horn reached its limit around the 8th harmonic of the series, a note I didn’t hit until a few months into the routine. Besides my regular morning sessions, I also played the horn late at night, but in a very different way. For the night recordings, I was quiet (at full blast, the horn clocks in over 110 decibels)—I’d make breath noise and spit sounds with a hot mic clipped to the bell. I did a lot of vocalizing, too. These late-night sessions got weird; they also produced absurd amounts of condensation and saliva inside the horn. I had to drain the instrument frequently.
I kept up this routine, and then, right before New Year’s Eve 2021, I had a dream about what to do with the dozens of long-form recordings I’d archived: I would layer and sculpt them into a single track. I immediately started, and the results sounded intriguing. I felt as if this dense piece of music did the job of folding time in on itself. In one amorphous track, I could hear the entire path that the horn and I had traversed through those many sessions. Ritual, struggle, practice, failure, success—it was all there. Musically, the piece I was creating centred around the horn’s fundamental tone, a sour G#. The music was chordal and melodic on the one hand, but due to both my limitations as a player and the nature of this unique instrument, it also had an atonal quality—a sublime and repugnant mix. My kind of music.
I kept playing and recording horn most days until late February 2022. I kept mixing as well, adding tracks as I went. Ultimately, I decided to sculpt two songs from my four-month ritual with the steel alphorn. “Part One” comprises around 35 sessions recorded in 2021. “Part Two” contains roughly 55 single sessions recorded in 2022. An interesting difference between these two pieces is that for the first one, I didn’t realize that what I was recording would be used to build a composition. During the two months I recorded in 2022, however, I knew what the recordings were for, and this knowledge contributed intention to my playing. With each layer I recorded in 2022, I thought about what characteristics might benefit the overall piece. For me, it’s interesting to consider this difference between the two tracks. Maybe it’s noticeable to you, the listener. Or maybe not.
By the end of February 2022, the horn was getting more challenging to play. Rust had taken over its innards. Most weekends, I would have to skip my sessions to plug leaks with epoxy resin. It got hard to keep up with the repairs. Around that time, I also purchased a new horn, an antique trompe de chasse–a French hunting horn. Like the alphorn, the trompe de chasse is a valveless natural horn; I figured it would be a good instrument to transition to from the weird art school horn I’d been obsessed with. And I was right; the new horn has been a significant feature in my life since it arrived.
As I write this, it’s almost been a year since I finished Wind Wound. So, I’m ecstatic to be finally presenting this special project on Full Spectrum. The label describes itself as having an “ear towards idiosyncratic tones, extended time frames and unique compositional approaches.” Those words seem to describe my album well. I’m glad they thought so too. As for the steel alphorn, I pulled it out the other day and gave a few blasts. I’m not sure if I should blame the horn or my collapsed embouchure, but whatever the case, I couldn’t get the thing to sound. Nothing but air. So perhaps all the music left of Austin’s horn is this album. Enjoy.
