<nettime-ann> Avatar Woman is out!

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

.


Hi - our new cd from Public Eyesore is out; you can order it through the URL 
below. Please consider this; the cd, Avatar Woman, has taken over a year in 
production, and has had the terrific assistance of Bryan Day, Chris Diasparra, 
Ed Schneider, Steve Holtje, and Godelstring Studio. It includes eleven songs by 
Azure Carter, with accompanying improvisation from Chris, Ed, and myself.

The album is relatively inexpensive with high production values (I did the 
full-color images that Bryan turned into the cd graphics). By buying it, you 
would also be supporting our music, which we have given away, so many times, 
for better or worse, for free. Following is the one-sheet description of the 
cd, including Steve Holtje's liner notes:

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Azure Carter & Alan Sondheim - NEW CD!


Avatar Woman
PE123

To Order:

http://www.publiceyesore.com/catalog.php?pg=3&pit=123

1. Buried
2. Dark Robe 3. Surely 4. Among The Ferns
5. World
6. Making Boys
7. Blood Tantra
8. Avatar Man with Dream Woman
9. What Remains 10. Marriage to Language
11. Buried II
12. Credo

Azure Carter : vocals and songs
Alan Sondheim : violin, dan moi, suroz, sarangi, electric guitar, oud, cura 
cumbus, electric saz, viola, cura saz, and pipa Christopher Diasparra : tenor 
and baritone saxophones Edward Schneider : alto saxophone

"Listen to any track on this album. Have you ever heard someone else who sings 
like Azure Carter? I sure haven't. Have you heard anyone who plays as a wide 
range of instruments, with such gleeful abandon, as Alan Sondheim does? Me 
neither. Put them together and this may be the most original and unique sound 
to come along in years, even decades perhaps.

Carter's lyrics are, I am told, related to and/or inspired by Second Life, an 
online virtual world. That may have significance for some, perhaps even great 
significance, but even a Luddite such as myself can enjoy them and interpret 
them in the context of meatbag life: longings for contact and connection, 
deconstructions of our strategies for satisfying that longing, self-analyses 
and reflection. Between the conundrums and quirks of that search and the 
restless music underpinning them, this is an album of unease, of a hypermodern 
sense of overwhelming possibility, even though sometimes Carter's cadences 
sound eerily like Psalms or the Song of Solomon (you can hear this right off 
the bat on "Among the Ferns").

About that music. Alan Sondheim, an underground icon from the '60s thanks to a 
1967 debut album on Riverboat that made the infamous Nurse With Wound list, 
followed up with two albums on notorious outsider label ESP-Disk', has made a 
21st-century comeback (in the interim, he established himself as an academic 
pioneering cyberspace theory). His improvised music resists all genre labels, 
though one can hear, in the sounds of the instruments chosen if not always the 
non-traditional techniques he uses to play them, so-called world music; on the 
tracks Ed Schneider and Chris Diasparra play on, there are traces of jazz in 
their contributions; and Sondheim's early blues roots shine through on "Credo." 
It is music based on gesture and timbre rather than harmony and/or melody, and 
rhythmically abjures beats. "That 'mama heartbeat,' that 'bom-bom-bom' . it's 
so boring, it's so banal," Don Van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart once said. "I 
want things to change like the patterns and shadows that fall from the sun." 
Sondheim's improvisations are like that, except as though played by a 
metabolism operating at a faster rate of speed, or filmed and fast-forwarded." 
. Steve Holtje

Azure Carter is an artist, educator, and singer/songwriter. When she isn't 
collaborating on music, video, or performance with her partner, Alan Sondheim, 
she is busy studying education theory or working on an on-going 
performance/video piece, The Fairyland Around Us, based on the writings of the 
early 20th century naturalist, Opal Whitely. Before moving to Providence, 
Carter lived in NYC and performed at numerous venues in the city and elsewhere, 
including the 92nd Street Y, Dance New Amsterdam, The Bowery Poetry Club, 
Eyebeam, Jack, and Highwire Gallery. In 2012, Fire Museum produced Cauldron, 
with Carter, Helena Espvall, and Sondheim, an album of improvisations and song- 
forms.

http://azurecarter.weebly.com

Alan Sondheim was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; he lives with his 
partner, Azure Carter in Providence, RI. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Brown 
University. A new-media artist, writer, and theorist, he has exhibited, 
performed and lectured widely.

http://www.alansondheim.org



http://www.publiceyesore.com

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