Description
PRE-ORDER ITEM — TO BE RELEASED MARCH 20, 2025. Any regular in-stock items ordered at the same time (in the same shopping cart) will be held aside and sent with your pre-ordered goods as one shipment. Orders with multiple pre-orders will be sent as one order, when all of the items in the order are available. If you want the order to ship immediately, or want your pre-ordered items to be sent out as soon as they arrive here, rather than in a group, you must order them separately. PAYMENT WILL BE TAKEN WHEN YOU COMPLETE CHECKOUT.
In 2023, Nigel Ayers, PBK, and Allan Zane collaborated on the striking CD ‘This Home Stands on Ancient Bones’, a work described as a “requiem for humanity” – meditative, emotionally charged, and deeply introspective. ‘Cartology of Shadows’ now emerges as the next chapter in this evolving project. For this phase, the collective widens its perceptual field with the addition of a fourth voice: Kirk Wilson, a long-time friend and collaborator of Allan Zane. Experienced from a vantage point deep within the void, ‘Cartology of Shadows’ unfolds as a fractal descent into the most distorted and bleak regions of human experience. Anchored by the spoken-word prose of Nigel Ayers, the release is steeped in existential dread and inward-turned scrutiny, drawing the listener into an intense metaphysical passage through Jungian archetypes, surreal imagery, and beyond.
Nigel Ayers, to many, needs no introduction. Ayers is the founding member of The Pump and Nocturnal Emissions. Nocturnal Emissions is a sound art project that has released numerous records and CDs in music styles ranging from electro-acoustic, musique concrete, hybridized beats, sound collage, post-industrial music, ambient and noise music. The sound art has been part of an ongoing multimedia campaign of guerrilla sign ontology utilizing video art, film, hypertext and other documents.
Emerging from the U.S. cassette underground of the 1980’s, Phillip B. Klingler, aka PBK, has forged a singular body of work across multiple formats, releasing many albums internationally, and defining a strain of sound rooted in electroacoustic practice, industrial music, and free improvisation. His instinctive turntable/synthesizer-driven compositions conjure dense but atmospheric sound worlds of unknown origin, which PBK has referred to as “noise-ambient audio”.
Kirk Wilson is an artist in his own right. In addition to being a formally trained art student and photographer, Wilson’s work also extends into sound design and music. Feeding off collaboration and multidisciplinary works from his early years, Kirk always found his home within the experimental venue of expression. Subtlebunny, a fledgling solo project, brought home the reality of self-producing music and helped him enter an entirely new environment of other artists. Bringing found sounds, field recordings, and ambient textures into his work, he explores the dark vibes of introspective isolation and beauty.
Allan Zane is best known for his “Dark Ambient” work as WYRM. In recent years, Zane has primarily focused his attention to his longest-standing project, Le Scrambled Debutante. Accurately referred to by Richard Rupenus (Bladder Flask, The New Blockaders, Mixed Band Philanthropist, Metgumbnerbone, etc.) as an “absurdity blender”, Le Scrambled Debutante bends audio data (as well as listener’s minds) into compositions of haute-buffoonery paralleled by none.
In much the same way as ‘This Home Stands On Ancient Bones’ was originally conceived, PBK was the impetus for ‘Cartology Of Shadows’ as well. Seeking to return to the organic, intuitive camaraderie that defined the earlier collaboration, PBK approached Allan Zane with the idea of extending the previous work. Always eager to engage in new creative exchanges, Zane in turn invited the other contributors to participate in the project. With all parties aligned, ‘Cartology of Shadows’ quickly took on a life of its own. As if drawing directly from the Akashic Record, the album felt less composed than channeled, emerging from somewhere beyond intention, and ultimately becoming far greater than the sum of its parts.
Limited edition of 100 copies.
