Steve Jansen, June 2020 SSB Away Artist, Drops Seven Albums from Residency
Rocks crunched in a dry creek bed. Desert shrubs colliding against cliff faces. Inorganic primitive techno. These are all sounds, captured by SSB Away artist in residence Steve Jansen during his June 2020 stay on Plaza Blanca, that are now available via a block of recently released material.
In late September, the Albuquerque-based artist released the first volume of Primitive Techno, which he performed live and outside (in a physically distanced setup on the northern New Mexico mesa) in late June. The album—recorded after the show with the aid of a barely-hanging-on 1970s era turntable, drum machine, cassette tapes and pocket synthesizer—is the first in a planned series of broken techno jams.
Jansen ventured down into the arroyo on three separate occasions, collecting ambient sounds and contact mic’ing Northern New Mexico plant life. The excursions resulted in multiple volumes of Plaza Blanca field recordings on the artist’s Section 31, a label devoted to documenting the sound-stacked environment of the U.S. Southwest.
Additionally, at the time of writing, Pittsburgh-based label Autumn Sounds planned a December 4 release of Place Setting. The collaged collection of desolate sounds, both native to northern New Mexico and imported from elsewhere, were captured during the duration of the two-week residency. Recording setting/situations for the Bandcamp Friday release: a bunch of handmade bells, sticks whipped in the air, shrubs, objects, ebow guitar, looped sax, a desert monsoon rainstorm that knocked out the power for eight hours.
The residency also inspired the long-procrastinated unveiling of DUMBING, a spinoff of Jansen’s harsh noise wall project PLUMBING. Two late-night, trip metal-inspired, F.O. jams are packaged in two separate cassettes with artwork by Albuquerque musician, video artist, filmmaker and visual artist James Lawrence. Place the physical editions of Dumb and Pretty Dumb side by side, and it yields one big dum (yet wonderful) piece of drawn art.
ABOUT SSB AWAY
SSB AWAY retreats provide crucial time and space for artists to germinate ideas that might otherwise be marginalized during the intensity of public life and artistic production. A network of residences offers artists the agency to take time away from their habitual surroundings and to rest and inhabit a nourishing space of creative sanctuary, solitude, access to nature, and multivalent privacy. SSB offers residencies in Abiquiu, New Mexico, and Podere Malabiccia, Tuscany, Italy. Applications for 2021 residences are currently being accepted.