Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$10USD or more
Limited Edition Dark Blue Cassette
Cassette + Digital Album
—
LIMITED EDITION OF 50
—
Dark blue super ferric cassette tape with a black & white pull-out insert featuring 10 surrealist landscape prints made from custom hand-carved wood blocks by Steve Goodwin (aka Skeleton Zoo) depicting the simulated paradoxes that saturate the album.
All tapes include a one-time use code to download the album in any format.
ONLY AVAILABLE ON BANDCAMP
+
Includes unlimited streaming of Hilsa
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Lost for a time, an interval. Though no time lost. Besides, this familiarity is amorphous, this nostalgia unplaced. Where was I?
Iridescent forms float in & out of focus, while hazy harmonies see-saw like the rich patterns borne in a stream's glimmer, dismantled & remade perpetually. Subliminal architecture, really. Transportive.
But even in the purity of black & white, it undulates as if caught in a bygone breeze. Yesterday or last year?
Abstract & concrete, simulated paradoxes tend to saturate. A glass of water spills off of a table only to never hit the ground; a sea of static washes the pond's shore; a hummed lullaby pierces through an alabaster crystal; a tree grows from your head ripe with fruits of impossible shapes.
And, yet here you are.
—
The third installment of Youngbloods' 2019 Spring Programme is the debut self-titled album from Brooklyn-based electroacoustic collaborative project Hilsa, guided by guitarist Kallie Lampel and cellist Skeleton Zoo (Steve Goodwin). Presented on limited edition cassette and across digital channels, Hilsa is a subtle cinematic narration that floats in and out of focus, see-sawing between hazy harmonies in a perpetual reconstruction of ambient, iridescent forms.
Through their solo projects, Lampel and Goodwin found a mutual affinity for peripheral melodies and ethereal soundscapes, and in 2016 the duo started developing a technique to sample and affect one another’s instrumentation as a framework for generative composition. By interweaving Lampel’s warm guitar work with Goodwin’s mini-orchestra of bells, music boxes, and cello, the two were able to delicately conjure a sense of amorphous familiarity and unplaced nostalgia, allowing rich patterns to be borne, dismantled, and remade.
While rooted in serendipitous pieces of improvisation, the recorded works of Hilsa offer the familiarity of motifs that only hint at a subliminal architecture. Balancing concrete and abstract structures while enfolding sparse contributions from the likes of Boston-based experimental musicians & vocalists Kira McSpice and Mercedes Aviles, each composition undulates as if caught in a bygone breeze.
Fully transportive, the Hilsa project is as resolutely illusory as the visual prints that accompany the cassette. Hard-carved into wood blocks by Goodwin, each black & white piece reflects the simulated paradoxes that saturate the album: a glass of water spills off of a table only to never hit the ground; shadows of fossilized fish swim in a sea of static; a hummed lullaby pierces through an alabaster crystal; a tree grows from a man’s head ripe with fruits of impossible geometric shapes—conclusively surreal.
credits
released April 19, 2019
All songs written and performed by Kallie Lampel and Skeleton Zoo (Steve Goodwin)
Kira McSpice appears on "saddestsongintheworld"
Mercedes Aviles appears on "Wash" and "Glass Something"
Songs 3, 5, 6, 10 recorded by Tyler Skoglund
Mixed by Kallie Lampel
Mastered by Steve Kitch at Audiomaster in London
Executive produced by Nicholas Concklin & John Moses
Artwork by Steve Goodwin
Design by Nicholas Concklin
Published by Mushpost LLC (ASCAP)
I own this record on vinyl. It always puts me in a good mood. Every time I listen to it I hear something new. The color of the vinyl is also super cute. colin domigan
Originally commissioned for use in the yoga classes Smith’s mother teaches, these ambient soundscapes have a natural, invigorating warmth. Bandcamp Album of the Day Jan 4, 2019
This compilation album features a collective of artists who used synthesizers, voice, and nature recordings to create their tracks. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 17, 2023