{"title":"Freedom To Spend","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWelcome to Freedom To Spend, a music label founded and operated by Pete Swanson and Jed Bindeman. With their passion for unique and boundary-pushing sounds, this label has become a hub for artists who dare to challenge conventions. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAt Freedom To Spend, we believe in the power of music to inspire and transform lives. Our diverse roster of *artists* encompasses a wide range of genres, from experimental electronic to avant-garde folk. We pride ourselves on curating an exceptional collection that pushes the boundaries of what is considered mainstream.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith our finger on the pulse of emerging talent, we are committed to providing a platform for *performers* who strive to create truly original music. By supporting these innovative voices, we aim to foster creativity and encourage listeners to explore new sonic territories.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"sync-or-swim","title":"Sync or Swim","description":"\u003cp\u003eBefore there was Rimarimba, Suffolk-born, Felixstowe-based musician and home recording enthusiast Robert Cox assembled a cast of friends, some musicians and some not so much, for an experiment in group exploration and ecstatic expression under the name The Same. Sonically and gravitationally defined by Cox's collaboration with guitarist Andy Thomas (a partnership which formed in 1976 to record as General Motors), \u003ci\u003eSync or Swim\u003c\/i\u003e, The Same's one and only album, also featured keyboards by Florence Atkinson and Paul Ridout, and vocals by Robert's sister Rebecca. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOriginally released in small cassette and vinyl quantities on Unlikely Records, Cox's imprint and a meeting point for many other musicians found at the fringe, the back cover of the original album jacket is as much a map of the personnel, place, and process fundamental to \u003ci\u003eSync or Swim\u003c\/i\u003e as it is a table of contents for DIY music-making at the beginning of the 80s: \"Recorded in peaceful Wiltshire between September 18th and October 6th 1981 (using a miscellany of home made devices) onto a Teac A-3300SX via a Teac A-3440. No noise reduction systems were used.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCox's own definition of British psychedelia is \"folk music meeting technology and going bonkers.\" It's by this definition that \u003ci\u003eSync or Swim\u003c\/i\u003e takes unexpected forms, from tape-speed tomfoolery, concrete sound collage and analog delayed marimbas, to the colourful spectrum of interwoven guitar play between Cox and Thomas reminiscent of Ghanaian Highlife but more accurately indebted to Jerry Garcia. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTransferred and remastered from the original tapes, The Same's \u003ci\u003eSync or Swim\u003c\/i\u003e arrives on Freedom To Spend, just in time for the album's 40th anniversary\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50452533838155,"sku":"1124845","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/dad59ef8-e770-4fe3-81b2-7d5663c334d1_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727155264"},{"product_id":"back-to-the-woodlands-and-where-the-woods-begin","title":"Back to the Woodlands and Where the Woods Begin","description":"\u003cp\u003eWritten and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album \u003ci\u003eNeighborhoods\u003c\/i\u003e. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn into a musical family, Ernest Hood began a promising career as a jazz guitarist during the 1940s, touring internationally with his brother Bill Hood and the saxophonist Charlie Barnet, before contracting polio in his late twenties. The disease left Ernest unable to play the guitar and confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It also forced him to adapt and innovate around his musical practices in the face of adversity; Hood’s value of sound matured with a remarkably democratic and nonhierarchical approach and application.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTaking up the zither, a less physically-demanding stringed instrument to the guitar, embarking upon the unprecedented process of incorporating field recordings into his work as early as 1956, and eventually discovering the synthesizer, Hood’s music became imbued with optimism and subtle cultural critique. This ethos and technique - refined over the coming decades - would lay the groundwork for a sprawling body of radio work, mail order recordings for homebound listeners, and \u003ci\u003eNeighborhoods\u003c\/i\u003e, self-issued as a small vinyl edition in 1975.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhere \u003ci\u003eNeighborhoods\u003c\/i\u003e, a nostalgic opus, drawing from a well of collective memory of the 1950s, is defined by traces of human activity, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e leaves the modern world behind, delving into Hood’s love for nature. Only recently discovered in his archives, the album dramatically expands his concept of “musical cinematography,” imagistically triggering states of sensory memory from within its zither and synthesizer melodies, intertwined with field recordings made during Hood’s extensive travels throughout Oregon. If Neighborhoods is a retreat into the gauzy joys of a romanticized past, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e is an immersion in the timeless sanctuary of the natural world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA fascinating counterpoint to its predecessor, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e brings us even closer to Hood’s belief in the transportive qualities of sound; that field recordings could serve as a vehicle for the imagination and liberation, particularly for those with similar mobile disabilities as his own. Across the album’s twelve compositions, the rippling instrumental harmonics - shifting between abstraction and playful melody - fold so seamlessly into the birdsong, bubbling brooks, and other environmental ambiences, that they often give the impression of having been recording within the landscapes toward which they whisper.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFalling somewhere between the immersive calm of healing music and New Age, the creative field recording practices of sound ecologists world building for Folkways, and the jazz infected ambiences during Obscure \/ Editions EG’s highest heights, Back to the Woodlands sculpts an singular proximity of music for its moment; a form of ambient sonic realism that draws the consciousness toward its surroundings as much as within.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWorking closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes. Ernest Hood’s \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e is issued on vinyl, as well as on CD in combination with its contemporary \u003ci\u003eWhere the Woods Begin\u003c\/i\u003e, with new liner notes by Michael Klausman. On behalf of Ernest Hood and Freedom To Spend, a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Oregon Wild, an organization dedicated\u003cbr\u003eto protecting and restoring Oregon’s wildlands, wildlife, and waters as an enduring legacy for future generations.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50457499566411,"sku":"1166207","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/21326357-db87-4726-b87f-9e623c2e90ad_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727205862"},{"product_id":"chaleur-humaine","title":"Chaleur Humaine","description":"\u003cp\u003eUman’s \u003ci\u003eChaleur Humaine\u003c\/i\u003e, the debut album from the French duo of musicians and siblings Danielle and Didier Jean, resurfaces for the first time since its original release in 1992. While history, both private and public, is scattered with creative relationships between siblings that simply “did not work,” Uman’s story is uniquely different and defined by this bond, and a shared journey impressing footprints along an adventurous musical terrain. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePrior to \u003ci\u003eChaleur Humaine\u003c\/i\u003e, Danielle and Didier recorded two albums of pop songs met mostly with ambivalence, inspiring them to escape the expectations of the French music industry and build their own studio in Orsay, a suburb south of Paris. \u003ci\u003eChaleur Humaine\u003c\/i\u003e was a modus operandi for their new, liberated perspective and space: freedom to develop ideas independently; to cross-pollinate genres and abandon them altogether; to improvise and experiment in new musical configurations. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWithin their recording sanctuary, Danielle and Didier embraced cutting edge consumer music technology to inform the album’s esoteric, textural characteristics. This is especially notable in the processing of Danielle’s voice, inventively sampled, shifted and processed, and then woven through Didier’s dream worlds. This interpretation of technology and economy of sound, gives \u003ci\u003eChaleur Humain\u003c\/i\u003ee a soft and impressionistic sense of surrealism, guided by a human sincerity and sublimated into a landscape that feels pastoral yet universal. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUman, the name which binds Danielle and Didier musically, resembles “human” in many Romance languages but signals a spirit from a deeper earth force. Similarly, Uman reinvents language in a postmodern way to create a harmony and truth that exists within and beyond human recognition. A poem, at once a theme and mantra, recurs throughout \u003ci\u003eChaleur Humaine\u003c\/i\u003e: \u003ci\u003e“It’s this force, almost animal, warm, like a kiss, fresh like the morning dew, that we call human warmth.” \u003c\/i\u003eDispatched across multiple languages over abstract melodic motifs, the message radiates from a place of meditated intent. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eChaleur Humaine\u003c\/i\u003e was released on Buda Musique during the French record label’s rise to prominence showcasing global sound, with several tracks plucked from the album and reaching an international audience through various New Age \/ “Chillout” compilations. Yet the album shares more in common with Piero Milesi and Daniel Bacalov’s work for stage and theater on La Camera Astratta , the introspective world building of Nuno Canavarro on Plux Quba, and the formless vocalism and ethereality of Cocteau Twins or Enya.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile Danielle and Didier admit an affinity for some of these artists, Uman were driven by their own invention, performing with local and fringe artists, and ultimately at ease in their secluded musical world. Even as the music of Uman ricochets off the walls of their safe haven in so many directions, the artists’ interplay of reference and abstraction of sound retains the intimacy of a wildly imaginative conversation between siblings. Uman’s \u003ci\u003eChaleur Humaine\u003c\/i\u003e is made available again on Freedom To Spend, for the first time on vinyl and as CD. On behalf of Uman, a portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Greenpeace France.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP","offer_id":50459545665867,"sku":"1126841","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50459546222923,"sku":"1126840","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/7ae1ba90-46ec-487b-818b-87d22fb46519_thumbnail_4096.png?v=1727224225"},{"product_id":"eros-in-arabia","title":"Eros in Arabia","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis vibration is cast into new dimensions. Liberating Eros, it circles the globe, backwards and forwards, flowing to and through us. It is said the artist has a gift— suited for the erotic life of property. On Eros in Arabia, Richard channels this vibration and bends bandit sounds by pairing the ancient ney cane flute with the Prophet-5 synthesizer. Interspersed with other instruments and ideas, like echo delayed Moroccan drumming and self-made magic, these elements deal in duality like the ever-shifting characteristics of the composer: the Hollywood Horowitz who scores films like The Sheltering Sky and Any Given Sunday, and the Morocco Horowitz who founded the Gnaoua Festival in Mogador, attended by 500,000 people every year. Horowitz is linked with the worldly sound seeking circles of minimalist and avant-garde New York City musicians, especially Lou Harrison and La Monte Young, with whom Horowitz shared Shandar as a record label momentarily. He recorded and toured with Jon Hassell and collaborated with David Byrne and Brian Eno, Jean-Philippe Rykie, and Bill Laswell. Along his travels he befriended Brion Gysin and Paul Bowles, the latter whom mentored Horowitz over decades of correspondence, some of which documents the making of Eros and comes quite literally with this edition. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50469163270475,"sku":"1017877","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/11179570-325d-497e-8ea8-744bf945ddd0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727357430"},{"product_id":"back-to-the-woodlands","title":"Back to the Woodlands","description":"\u003cp\u003eWritten and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn into a musical family, Ernest Hood began a promising career as a jazz guitarist during the 1940s, touring internationally with his brother Bill Hood and the saxophonist Charlie Barnet, before contracting polio in his late twenties. The disease left Ernest unable to play the guitar and confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It also forced him to adapt and innovate around his musical practices in the face of adversity; Hood’s value of sound matured with a remarkably democratic and nonhierarchical approach and application.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTaking up the zither, a less physically-demanding stringed instrument to the guitar, embarking upon the unprecedented process of incorporating field recordings into his work as early as 1956, and eventually discovering the synthesizer, Hood’s music became imbued with optimism and subtle cultural critique. This ethos and technique - refined over the coming decades - would lay the groundwork for a sprawling body of radio work, mail order recordings for homebound listeners, and \u003ci\u003eNeighborhoods,\u003c\/i\u003e self-issued as a small vinyl edition in 1975.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhere Neighborhoods, a nostalgic opus, drawing from a well of collective memory of the 1950s, is defined by traces of human activity, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e leaves the modern world behind, delving into Hood’s love for nature. Only recently discovered in his archives, the album dramatically expands his concept of “musical cinematography,” imagistically triggering states of sensory memory from within its zither and synthesizer melodies, intertwined with field recordings made during Hood’s extensive travels throughout Oregon. If \u003ci\u003eNeighborhoods\u003c\/i\u003e is a retreat into the gauzy joys of a romanticized past, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e is an immersion in the timeless sanctuary of the natural world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA fascinating counterpoint to its predecessor, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands\u003c\/i\u003e brings us even closer to Hood’s belief in the transportive qualities of sound; that field recordings could serve as a vehicle for the imagination and liberation, particularly for those with similar mobile disabilities as his own. Across the album’s twelve compositions, the rippling instrumental harmonics - shifting between abstraction and playful melody - fold so seamlessly into the birdsong, bubbling brooks, and other environmental ambiences, that they often give the impression of having been recording within the landscapes toward which they whisper.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFalling somewhere between the immersive calm of healing music and New Age, the creative field recording practices of sound ecologists world building for Folkways, and the jazz infected ambiences during Obscure \/ Editions EG’s highest heights, \u003ci\u003eBack to the Woodlands \u003c\/i\u003esculpts an singular proximity of music for its moment; a form of ambient sonic realism that draws the consciousness toward its surroundings as much as within.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWorking closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50485296267595,"sku":"1166212","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/0f8a5301-a3c9-4817-8ab4-7717c972a3b0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727598193"},{"product_id":"echolocation-1","title":"Echolocation","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eEcholocation\u003c\/i\u003e is the debut album by Pamela Z, the pioneering Bay Area intermedia composer and performance artist. Written and recorded over three years, and self-released and distributed on cassette in 1988, \u003ci\u003eEcholocation\u003c\/i\u003e is genre-defying document of Z’s earliest experiments with live voice and delay, and the impetus of an artist’s three decade search for sounds yet unfelt.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBorn and raised in Buffalo, New York, Z traded one snowy backdrop for another to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder at the tail end of the 70s, where she pursued a degree in music while taking local gigs covering Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds b-sides on an acoustic guitar. While a host at KGNU, Z discovered a vast world of avant-garde music in the community radio station’s library, and was inspired to create towards, and alongside, the fringe sounds she pulled from the stacks and broadcast. This revelation intersected with a new era of accessible and affordable instruments and home recording technology, and a diversifying community of artists self-releasing music on cassette and finding an audience through underground publications.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eZ moved again to San Francisco in 1984, legally changed her last name, and furthered her practice of vocal processing in live environments. A city simultaneously nurturing and stratifying the free spirit of the two decades prior, Z assumed an immediate role in the Bay Area’s interdisciplinary performance art scene, and began curating Z Programs, her own concert and event series. With a stage to workshop, the beginning pieces of Echolocation took form with the intuitive pairing of Pamela’s voice and an Ibanez DM1000, a digital delay unit with looping capabilities that would complement, and complete, her early craft.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRecorded on a Yamaha MT1X 4-track cassette recorder in the back room of an apartment Z shared with two other San Francisco musicians, \u003ci\u003eEcholocation\u003c\/i\u003e is a document of an artist finding her voice. Or in Pamela’s case, her voices. Outside of collaborations with Donald Swearingen and Bill Stefanacci on “I Know” and “An In” respectively, the album consists of live vocal and electronics compositions from her performance repertoire, and a few fixed-media pieces written, performed, and engineered entirely by Z, dutifully assuming and learning each mode as she went along.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eEcholocation\u003c\/i\u003e is a mélange of texture and meaning through melody. Each piece exhibits raw materiality, whether a metronomic click and clack of Z’s patent oversize drum sticks or an alien synth portamento, and each voice searches new emotion, at times through a strata and at others via lyrical abstraction chronicling the mundane duality in the everyday. As embedded in Echolocation as her current practice, Z states, “I have always had a fascination with language and speech, and use the sound of the human voice as both an inspiration and a primary source for the actual generation of the music.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUpon its release, \u003ci\u003eEcholocation\u003c\/i\u003e received favourable reviews, and Z manufactured several editions of the cassette to accommodate the interest from independent distributors including Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening catalog. From there, Pamela’s performance and composing schedules exploded, becoming her primary focus. Writing, recording, and mixing new music remains a consistent practice for Z, as evident in her 2021 album \u003ci\u003eA Secret Code\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eEcholocation \u003c\/i\u003edocuments the earliest efforts of an artist’s lifelong commitment to an exploration of sound, and the individualism inherent within.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePamela Z’s \u003ci\u003eEcholocation\u003c\/i\u003e is released on Freedom To Spend as a first time vinyl edition. Remastered by Jessica Thompson, and featuring liner notes from Jon Leidecker, a portion of the proceeds from the sales of Echolocation will benefit The Center for New Music, which fosters contemporary music’s growth by giving practicing artists access to professional resources and expertise, and by providing them with opportunities for sharing knowledge and exploring new ideas.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50502206128459,"sku":"1133168","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/4e3f5eb7-5ef0-40b5-8881-829f7a0e5c07_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727789323"},{"product_id":"american-rituals","title":"American Rituals","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn the outskirts of late 1970s Olympia, Washington, something stirs, sings, and breathes. Cheri Knight, a music composition student at the Evergreen State College, is developing her practice in a quaint but adequately equipped campus recording studio, amalgamating with the sonic timbre of the surrounding time, space, and place, while devoting to her own inner maxims. At once performative and meditative, electronic and organic, collaborative and self-contained, Cheri’s early compositions are simultaneously complete and sketches of a ceremonial process at play. American Rituals captures the artist’s environmental emergence, unearthing a unique compositional voice and signposting a regional sonic ethos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe path to Evergreen seems gently preordained for Cheri, a whisper in the trees. Growing up in a musical household in Western Massachusetts, she learned to play piano and clarinet, demurring from notated music but composing piano pieces in the minimalist mode of Erik Satie and folk songs inspired by Joni Mitchell. In high school, her class studied John Cage’s work, an epiphanic moment for the young artist. The group also visited a studio outside Amherst where she encountered the modular limitlessness of a Moog synthesizer. Cheri studied philosophy and music at Whitman College in Washington, and then took a year to build a stone house with some friends in New Hampshire. She settled at Evergreen soon after, carrying with her a zeal for improvisation, creative investigation, and hands-on experimentation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe seven works anthologized on \u003ci\u003eAmerican Rituals\u003c\/i\u003e are foremost an expression of Cheri’s elemental approach to creating, rather than writing, music. Polyvocal chants, spoken-word collages, primal post-punk excursions and hymn-like incantations are bound together by a performative energy; a Cage-ian commitment to the present moment which harbors a meditative interior. The first piece Cheri made at Evergreen manifested when a multi-tracked mic test spontaneously evolved into a vocal ostinato. This experience of layering her own voice allowed Cheri to see images of the sounds she was making “in real time.” In Cheri’s music, language takes on a playful, fluxist, material quality as it is patterned in space. This word play is most evident in pieces like “Prime Numbers” and “Primary Colors,” which uses speech as an elemental material forming our changeable perception of the world. Channeled through the human voice, which is instrumentalized in every piece on American Rituals, language becomes a mutable force and a virtuosic apparatus. Spoken, sung, recited, incanted, chanted, instructed, whispered. It asks us to breathe, in and out. It tells us stories, reads us instructions, reminds us of water. Through rhythmically repeated speech patterns and flowing turns of phrase, the voice conveys ritualized patterns of everyday material becoming beautiful and strange, musical and memorable, conceptual and devotional.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe musical output of Evergreen entering the 1980s should not be underestimated in its contribution to the burgeoning Seattle-Olympia DIY axis, with pieces on \u003ci\u003eAmerican Rituals\u003c\/i\u003e evidencing a contagious ethos and aesthetic. K. Leimer’s Palace of Lights label first issued Cheri’s “Primary Colors” and “Hear\/Say” as part of its 1982 compilation Regional Zeal, Mouth Music From Olympia Washington, while “Prime Numbers” and “Breathe” were included on the Steve Fisk - produced compilation Dub Communiqué the same year. But beyond catalog crossover and collaborative evolution, there is a shared sonic energy coursing through \u003ci\u003eAmerican Rituals\u003c\/i\u003e which speaks to an absorption of place, of atmosphere, of weather.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring a peer pilgrimage to the 1981 New Music America Festival in San Francisco, a change in weather was forecasted when Cheri met composer and theorist Pauline Oliveros. She spent part of her final year at Evergreen independently studying at the Zen Arts Center in Mount Tremper, New York, with Pauline and her partner, the performance artist Linda Montano. Aligning with both luminaries amplified the artistic and philosophical resonance of Cheri’s work, bringing tenets of Buddhism and Living Art into both her artistic and life practice. Following these principles, Cheri’s art eventually did become absorbed into life: living on a farm with goats in rural Massachusetts, writing songs, playing in bands, and eventually drifting away from music and into other things. But as is often the case, the path taken is never forgotten, only temporarily out of mind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith the help of old friends and new, the music of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Rituals\u003c\/i\u003e was salvaged (not without hundreds of emails and phone calls) from master tapes stored in the collections of various peers and recording engineers from the extended Evergreen set, and is re-presented \/ represented now with care.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50511744926027,"sku":"1156015","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ea091f98-5f3b-48ac-841a-4754bca7042f_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727893468"},{"product_id":"poiemusia-la-nau-dels-argonautes","title":"Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePoiemusia La Nau dels Argonautes\u003c\/i\u003e was originally issued by the Madrid label Grabaciones Accidentales in 1987. This record is meant to be enjoyed like a seascape. It offers a Mediterranean journey, one that Ulysses, Aeneas, and Jason with his Argonauts charted first and Valencian artist, Pep Llopis, retraced and retread - from the islands of Menorca to Santorini. All of his experiences are aboard this vessel of sound: no format in mind, no course but the chasm within self. While \u003ci\u003ePoiemusia La Nau Dels Argonautes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003ematerializes at this moment as an album, another object suits Pep’s project: Lewis Carroll’s\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eMap of the Ocean\u003c\/i\u003e from his The Hunting of the Snark. It’s a simple illustration: the thin outline of a blank rectangle that represents the sea with no trace of land. Carroll offers this empty space as an object that all can understand, a container for possibility. Likewise, Poiemusia offers a musical language that any listener can understand. Untethered to the meaning of words, one is set adrift and free in minimalist sound and traditional music. \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eLlopis, who often composed for dance, originally wrote Poiemusia\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003efor a performance at the Poiemusia festival (the Greek contraction of poetry and music). Peer composers, Carles Santos and Wim Mertens, also participated in the festival, which took place over several days at the Teatro Princesa in Valencia. Llopis paired his newly formed avant-garde compositions with the poems of fellow Valencian, Salvador Jàfer. In the studio presentation of Poiemusia, voices softly converse, only to evaporate. The poetry is incanted by the poet himself. Jàfer enunciates at the verge of song, drawing dimension from his Mediterranean travels. He is accompanied by Montse Anfruns’\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003evaporous voice. She extends the roll of her r’s and the hiss of each s as if casting a spell of Salacia. Pep bathes their conversational performance in slight delays and reverb, allowing their voices to dissolve into an ocean of sound. Llopis was influenced by minimal American composers like Steve Reich\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eand La Monte Young. He embraces the melodic sides of these masters in the winds of \u003ci\u003eEl Vell Rei De La Serp \u003c\/i\u003eand the tender piano on \u003ci\u003eNits de cristall\u003c\/i\u003e. You will find yourself submerged in tonality on tracks like \u003ci\u003eJardins Aquàtics\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eLa Nau Dels Argonautes\u003c\/i\u003e which have a kinship to Philip Glass\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eor Daniel Lentz. Each piece extends from 5 to almost 14 minutes.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eThe music gently laps against listening skin- sometimes placid, sometimes shimmering. Ripples of sound swell and quicken. Flutes like schools of fish. The spray of chimes. Taught strings break like the shore. Tingling, undulating synths. The record cover acts as a map, tracing the forms of the original art and providing the poems in Catalana and Spanish. Once bathed in these sounds one will emerge like Carroll’s map: “a perfect and absolute blank.”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Freedom To Spend","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50911152865611,"sku":"1012313","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/411b6de6-c434-4b9d-b604-2d28daec596c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1732929704"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_a3a7f46e_thumbnail_4096_f1118e98-91bd-4de3-a2cb-9655a30df0ee.jpg?v=1727155245","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/fr\/collections\/freedom-to-spend.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}