improviser, audio editor, curator, cook, field recordist, disorganizer of sounds, organizer of multi-disciplinary gatherings in Western Massachussetts
1.30.22
Stella Silbert/Nat Baldwin
Notice Recordings, 2023
Stella Silbert and Nat Baldwin’s "01.30.22" starts with a disorienting and curt mixture of vinyl static, chopped and skewed mysterious acoustic guitar strings, and a loud, acoustic “thud”. It’s an introduction to a strange piece of music from a strange album by two fascinating players in the current improvised and contemporary music landscape. This first piece, “5”, warbles and wobbles its way though oddly lyrical passages, framed in sporadic collaged format by the rapidly cut pitch-shifted classical guitar emanating from Silbert’s prepared turntable, pockmarked with abrasive static. Baldwin’s breathy, thick, and textured double bass playing wonderfully compliments such engaging sounds, while both voices allow one another to breathe freely. This is a consistent feeling throughout the album: one is allowed to breathe and mentally wander throughout these sounds. Despite their intensity, they are never exhausting. (Quite literally, one can hear Baldwin’s labored breath throughout the recording.) Notice became aware of Silbert’s work via the incredible duo Beige, with Liam Kramer-White, and here on "01.30.22", one can similarly hear the unique approach to timbre, dynamic, and pacing. Baldwin runs the much-loved Tripticks Tapes, and has roots in both improvised music and song-based work, with a number of solo albums on Western Vinyl. His plucked, bowed, scraped or otherwise altered double bass exists as an adaptable and amorphous hinge throughout the performances; facilitating movements of sounds both horizontally and vertically, simultaneously closing and opening segments. The duo’s interplay and dynamic is deeply exciting and presents a fresh and weird sound in free improvisation.
Evan LIndorff-Ellery, 2023
Stella Silbert/Nat Baldwin
Notice Recordings, 2023
Stella Silbert and Nat Baldwin’s "01.30.22" starts with a disorienting and curt mixture of vinyl static, chopped and skewed mysterious acoustic guitar strings, and a loud, acoustic “thud”. It’s an introduction to a strange piece of music from a strange album by two fascinating players in the current improvised and contemporary music landscape. This first piece, “5”, warbles and wobbles its way though oddly lyrical passages, framed in sporadic collaged format by the rapidly cut pitch-shifted classical guitar emanating from Silbert’s prepared turntable, pockmarked with abrasive static. Baldwin’s breathy, thick, and textured double bass playing wonderfully compliments such engaging sounds, while both voices allow one another to breathe freely. This is a consistent feeling throughout the album: one is allowed to breathe and mentally wander throughout these sounds. Despite their intensity, they are never exhausting. (Quite literally, one can hear Baldwin’s labored breath throughout the recording.) Notice became aware of Silbert’s work via the incredible duo Beige, with Liam Kramer-White, and here on "01.30.22", one can similarly hear the unique approach to timbre, dynamic, and pacing. Baldwin runs the much-loved Tripticks Tapes, and has roots in both improvised music and song-based work, with a number of solo albums on Western Vinyl. His plucked, bowed, scraped or otherwise altered double bass exists as an adaptable and amorphous hinge throughout the performances; facilitating movements of sounds both horizontally and vertically, simultaneously closing and opening segments. The duo’s interplay and dynamic is deeply exciting and presents a fresh and weird sound in free improvisation.
Evan LIndorff-Ellery, 2023
Playbackers Record
Playbackers (trio with Arkm Foam & Neil Cloaca Young)
Tripticks Tapes, 2023
Playbackers (trio with Arkm Foam & Neil Cloaca Young)
Tripticks Tapes, 2023
Sweetness the point of song
Sweetness the point of song (solo)
No Rent Records, 2021
Sweetness the point of song (solo)
No Rent Records, 2021
Beige
Beige (duo with Liam Kramer-White)
Feeding Tube Records, 2018
Most humans in the 21st century seem bent on making patience less and less of a virtue, but Beige don’t care. On their first full-length release – called Beige – they’re not about to rush through a track so you have time to check your phone or finish fast because you have some TV show to catch up on. They take 84 minutes to get where they’re going, and they use every one of those clock-ticks wisely. Their music is efficiency elongated: each sonic step gets full opportunity to make an impression and build a bridge to the next, and they all take splendid advantage of that ripe chance.
Stella Silbert and Liam Kramer-White started Beige last year as a “bedroom recording project” in Western Mass. They met at Hampshire College, but Stella’s roots are in baked L.A. while Liam previously chilled in Portland, Maine. Perhaps that ancestral contrast plays a role in Beige’s music, but what’s most striking about Beige is how the pair melt their sounds into a single, steady stream that could easily stretch from the shivering Northeast down to sweaty SoCal. Using a Casio CZ-101 and Microkorg XL, Stella and Liam made each track in real time, eschewing revisions in favor of the patient immediacy their chemistry has clearly sparked.
There are stretches in Beige that are mind-bendingly somnambulant, as if your attention were the last thing on the duo’s mind. Take nearly all 11 minutes of “fluorescent, flourescent, florescent, floresent,” a slow, subconscious tone that feels like it’s been decaying for decades. But don’t let Beige’s music lull you into comfort, because there are surprises strewn throughout these seven tracks – the kind of surprises that only ears that are willing to wait for them can fully absorb.
Marc Masters, 2018
Beige (duo with Liam Kramer-White)
Feeding Tube Records, 2018
Most humans in the 21st century seem bent on making patience less and less of a virtue, but Beige don’t care. On their first full-length release – called Beige – they’re not about to rush through a track so you have time to check your phone or finish fast because you have some TV show to catch up on. They take 84 minutes to get where they’re going, and they use every one of those clock-ticks wisely. Their music is efficiency elongated: each sonic step gets full opportunity to make an impression and build a bridge to the next, and they all take splendid advantage of that ripe chance.
Stella Silbert and Liam Kramer-White started Beige last year as a “bedroom recording project” in Western Mass. They met at Hampshire College, but Stella’s roots are in baked L.A. while Liam previously chilled in Portland, Maine. Perhaps that ancestral contrast plays a role in Beige’s music, but what’s most striking about Beige is how the pair melt their sounds into a single, steady stream that could easily stretch from the shivering Northeast down to sweaty SoCal. Using a Casio CZ-101 and Microkorg XL, Stella and Liam made each track in real time, eschewing revisions in favor of the patient immediacy their chemistry has clearly sparked.
There are stretches in Beige that are mind-bendingly somnambulant, as if your attention were the last thing on the duo’s mind. Take nearly all 11 minutes of “fluorescent, flourescent, florescent, floresent,” a slow, subconscious tone that feels like it’s been decaying for decades. But don’t let Beige’s music lull you into comfort, because there are surprises strewn throughout these seven tracks – the kind of surprises that only ears that are willing to wait for them can fully absorb.
Marc Masters, 2018