Connive

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2020-02-18

Label: Reserve Matinee

RM037

Under the Connive alias, Michael Stumpf (Faithful, Esper Werm, Drosophila, et al) presents cathartic slabs of dense multi-sourced noise straight to your dome.

The self-titled debut tape begins with "Source Bonding" a densely-layered bed of granular synthesis based on a Denis Smalley concept. There is a sound that appears to be in another room, with the door opening every so often to reveal shrieking textures. Connive establishes a sense of stylistic otherness from the get-go, gliding in-between numerous textural and perceptive angles, at times crashing straight through them.

The sound of a tape player is heard and "Senseless Carnage" begins oscillating itself around the listener's environment. A dizzying and gripping piece that lasts over seven minutes and spills into "Cheek of Sorrow", a classic Midwest basement banger (if you know u kno). The tape comes to a close with "Contaminated "by the barracks and the sacristy"", a jarring and impressive 12-minute jam that travels in all directions. Stumpf's creative decisions in-the-moment are what give his compositions power. There is not one idle second on 'Connive' - these four tracks are distinct in their raw energy and direct in their statements.

Available on black cassettes.

released February 18, 2020

Recorded in Chicago, Winter 2019.

"Music is a metaphysical illusion, whose secrets are often felt but never uttered." –Francis Grierson, Celtic Temperament, 1901

"Art and sounds inspired by The San Quentin Project: Nigel Poor and the Men of San Quentin State Prison exhibit that ran from Oct 18, 2018 – Mar 10, 2019 at the Milwaukee Art Museum's Bradley Family Gallery. 'Cheek of Sorrow'/'Senseless Carnage' were both recorded together on February 15th, 2019, my political response to the Aurora, Illinois mass shooting that took place on the same day. 'Source Bonding' is a test study in Denis Smalley's spectromorphological concept of source bonding, or manipulating grain samples of found sound layered with synthetic noise."