SMOKEY EMERY / VENISON WHIRLED
“turning into” KSE #357 (cdr album)
Daniel Hipolito (SE): electronics, tapes
Lisa Cameron (VW): amplified percussion
$8 postpaid in US ($18 outside US postpaid)
payment via paypal to django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com
please include a note letting us now what you are ordering & your mailing address…thanks!
Great to welcome back two heavy-hitters from KSE’s past line-up AND the Texas higher-key tribal-psych/drone/feedback scene, both of whom have many years of great recordings and live shows behind them, now together on a deep and primal duo album…..SMOKEY EMERY (Daniel Hipolito) and VENISON WHIRLED (Lisa Cameron) with TURNING INTO (KSE #357).
We love duo albums here at KSE. Think of the ones by Alfred 23 Harth & John Bell and by Tom Crean & Matt Rodidoux which we’ve issued in the last year. Put together two people who are masters at what they do and in total command of their art and let them dialogue, with that dialogue being documented on the canvas of sound painting.
TURNING INTO (KSE #357) features a man who IS actually an acclaimed visual artist (so I don’t feel guilty about trotting out the probably overused term “painterly” to discuss his work), Daniel Hipolito (aka SMOKEY EMERY), working in subtle manipulations of tapes and electronics. I’ve done readings alongside Daniel and also poetry-and-electronics performances with Daniel, and I’ve seen him up-close with his arsenal of tapes (both those found and those recorded by himself) and small cassette recorders/players, creating beautiful and rich sound paintings, ones which seem to always be grounded in the textures of the earth because of their analog origin. Daniel/Smokey has recorded for a number of labels, including Texas labels KSE and Holodeck. Here is a nice piece from the Austin Chronicle on his Holodeck entry in his Soundtracks for Invisibility series:
Add to that the amplified percussion of Texas psychedelic treasure Lisa Cameron in her VENISON WHIRLED guise. VW is a project devoted to controlled feedback emanating from tuned percussion. Lisa has been doing Venison Whirled performances in Austin (and elsewhere) for many years. She gets the various percussion instruments going until they cross the line and bleed into the realm of feedback, which she then manipulates. Lisa’s roots are deep and go back to the days of the Velvets or the Yardbirds or the MC5 leaning the guitars against the amps and going off-stage, letting them feedback gloriously, but she also is in the vanguard of the contemporary avant-garde music scene and is a lady who is always wearing multiple hats and playing in multiple bands (let’s not forget that the great Austin psychedelic band ST37, for which Lisa drums, is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year). Lisa’s played with anyone who’s anyone, from Mani Neumeier to Roky Erickson to Eugene Chadbourne to the members of Faust, and she’s also opened for Psychic TV TWICE in Austin….among about 1000 other things. Since KSE branched into music (from our original poetry base), we’ve released something featuring Lisa each year, and she was an important part of all four KSE live shows we did in 2011-2012. When I was asked by Corwood Industries to assemble a band for the Jandek 2012 Austin show which KSE co-produced, Lisa was the first person I approached, and the Representative from Corwood was effusive in his praise of her work. In fact, during the rehearsals, he worked with Lisa to get the basic form of the pieces worked out in advance, and only after he and Lisa got that done did he work the other musicians’ roles into the picture. Lisa continues to do Venison Whirled performances every few months, and honestly, there is NO ONE doing anything remotely like this. She is first and foremost a PERCUSSIONIST, and that makes all the differences.
The duo-dance of SMOKEY EMERY and VENISON WHIRLED is something to behold. I’ve been enjoying this album a lot in the last few months as we were getting it ready for release. My own approach to appreciating the album is the lock in on Lisa’s percussion feedback, as a kind of frame to the pieces, and then open yourself to the duo-unity here, with Daniel’s painterly strokes and textured washes.
Interestingly, the names mentioned to me when I asked Daniel and Lisa about the sessions were Steve Stapleton (NWW) and the Source Family. NWW certainly makes sense, but the Source Family reference really helps to get to the heart of this album. When I first listened to it, as a poet, I thought in terms of images….and those that came to mind were deep-underground tectonic shifts….or the sound of glaciers breaking off and scraping and moving at super-slow pace into the Arctic seas. Think of Source Family/Ya Ho Wa 13 (and KSE was privileged to release an album from Djin Aquarian of YHWA 13 a few years back) and you think of the deepest and most primal in tribal-psych. This music grows out of the earth–to gloss a legendary 60s underground album, it’s the BEAT OF THE EARTH. It’s music that creates its own sense of time–and it’s 180 degrees removed from the many synth-based noise units out there, although to the casual listener who does not FEEL music (or has now idea how such music is produced), it might sound similar on the surface….possibly.
KSE is excited to pair these two sound artists whose works we’ve championed and savored for many years. We apologize for the delay in releasing this album, which was originally scheduled in October. However, it’s out NOW and ready for you to order. $8 postpaid in the US, $18 postpaid outside the US, and remember, you can get any TWO KSE albums postpaid outside the US for just $20 (the first one costs us nearly $14 to send, alas, but the second, not much over that)–that’s just TWO DOLLARS extra for the second album. Might I suggest that you get LIQUID SUNSHINE (KSE #328), LISA CAMERON’S powerful percussion duo with NATHAN BOWLES (Pelt, etc.) as your second album, alongside TURNING INTO. The two albums will provide a real insight into the percussion mind and spirit of Lisa Cameron, someone who is taking percussion to new and exciting places. If you want to talk primal and higher-key, then PERCUSSION is where you start….and where it all started millenia ago.
Daniel/Smokey lives and works in Los Angeles presently, but he will always be a Texan at heart, and as we said earlier, Lisa/Venison is a Texas psychedelic treasure. We’re excited and proud to present them together on this deep and satisfying new KSE album.
Payment is via paypal, using the e-mail address django5722(at)yahoo(dot)com . It might be helpful for you to also shoot me an e-mail telling me you’ve sent funds and what books you want…or if you prefer, tell me what books/cdr’s you want, and I’ll send you a paypal invoice.
Cost in the USA is $8 postpaid.
OUTSIDE THE USA , one album is $18.00 postpaid, first two albums are $20.00 postpaid, then $8 each postpaid after that—sorry, but it now costs almost $14 US to send one CDR overseas….you save A LOT by buying more than one—in fact, the price on an order of two or more HAS GONE DOWN! Outside US: 1 album= $18, 2 albums= $20, 3 albums= $28, etc. Thanks for your understanding of this. The Post Office now charges $13.75 to mail ONE cdr without a jewel box to Europe or Asia!)
And while you are getting a copy of SMOKEY/VENISON, why not also get some of our other KSE cdr albums of top-shelf experimental music in its purest form. You’ll never read about THIS kind of thing in THE WIRE (thank God!). If you are ordering some of the older items found below, please list an alternate or two as some are down to just a few copies left. Thanks!
OTHER CDR ALBUMS STILL AVAILABLE from KSE:
KSE #363 (CDR) ALFRED 23 HARTH’s BERLIN ENSEMBLES
KSE #355 (CDR), MORE EAZE, “wOrk”
KSE #359 (CDR), TOM CREAN & MATT ROBIDOUX, “blank space”
KSE #353 (CDR), FOSSILS, “Camelot Towers”
KSE #336 (CDR), ALFRED 23 HARTH, “Kepler 452b Edition”
KSE #351 (CDR), MASSIMO MAGEE, “Music In 3 Spaces”
KSE #350 (CDR) ANTHONY GUERRA / BILL SHUTE, “Subtraction” KSE reissue of album originally released in 2011 on Black Petal Records, Australia
KSE #335 (CDR album), REVEREND RAYMOND BRANCH, “Rainbow Gospel Hour…On The Air!”—a wonderful hour-long AM-radio broadcast, mastered from cassette, capturing the warmth and joy of Rev. Branch in both music (lots of it) and spoken message
KSE #334 (CDR album), BRIAN RURYK, “Actual Size…degress again” (sic)
KSE #333 (CDR album), ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, “Tunnels” solo 12-string acoustic mantra guitar
KSE #331, “KSE 10th ANNIVERSARY ALBUM” featuring newly recorded, exclusive tracks from members of the KSE family: ALFRED 23 HARTH, SARAH HENNIES, RAMBUTAN, VANESSA ROSSETTO, ERNESTO DIAZ-INFANTE, DEREK ROGERS, BRENT FARISS, MATT KREFTING, GRAHAM LAMBKIN, and MASSIMO MAGEE
KSE #328, LISA CAMERON & NATHAN BOWLES, “Liquid Sunshine” percussion duo
KSE #326, MORE EAZE (aka Marcus M. Rubio), “Abandoning Finitude”….cover art by Bob Bruno
KSE #322, WEREWHEELS (Sir Plastic Crimewave & Dawn Aquarius), “Live, Raw and Psycho In Japan”
KSE #320, MIKE BARRETT & TOM CREAN, “Casual Luddites”
KSE #318, ALFRED 23 HARTH & JOHN BELL, “Camellia”
KSE #310, MORE EAZE (Marcus M. Rubio), “Accidental Prizes”
KSE #293, MORE EAZE (Marcus M. Rubio), “Stylistic Deautomatization” (reissued)
Kendra Steiner Editions (Bill Shute) 