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Jason Sharp
A Boat Upon Its Blood

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    CST119   180gLP • CD • DL

    Release Date: 30 September 2016

    Duration: 38:01

     


    Jason Sharp has been a fixture of Montréal’s experimental/improv scene for many years, chiefly as a saxophonist exploring drone and durational music, while also collaborating in a wide variety of jazz, avant and contemporary music ensembles – he has several prior links to Constellation, notably as part of Sam Shalabi’s Land Of Kush orchestra and Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin Chapter One band, and as a session player on Thee Silver Mt Zion’s 2010 album Kollaps Tradixionales.

    Sharp’s work as a composer, conductor and band leader in his own right is now featured on A Boat Upon Its Blood, the first album-length recording to be released under his own name: a bracingly meditative multi-movement instrumental work that charts a highly compelling arc of shifting energies and intensities, tracing a heterogeneous cycle of minimalisms and maximalisms. Using custom-built equipment to translate breath and heart rate into variegated sonic triggers, along with other modes of signal processing and in tandem with traditional instrumentation, A Boat Upon Its Blood features Sharp’s own reed playing and contributions from a few guest musicians, particularly Josh Zubot on violin and Joe Grass on pedal steel guitar.

    Taking its title(s) from Robert Creeley’s poem “The Heart”, A Boat Upon Its Blood deploys the human metronome of amplified pulse as a recurring undercurrent, with compositions that incorporate electro-acoustic and musique concrète strategies, drone, noise, electronics, methodical dissonance, tone poem, layered rhythmic and melodic figures, and improvisation.

    Recorded by Thierry Amar (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Silver Mt Zion, Vic Chesnutt) at the Hotel2Tango in Montréal and mixed and mastered by Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Drip Audio Records), A Boat Upon Its Blood is a genre-defying album with a highly immersive and satisfying sound palette that impels deep listening and demands to be taken in as a whole. Constellation is thrilled to present Jason Sharp as a unique and invigorating new voice in modern contemporary music.

    Thanks for listening.
     

    PACKAGING NOTES

    LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve,
    credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album.
    CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve.
     

    CREDITS

    Music written for amplified heart and breath.
    All compositions by Jason Sharp.

    Jason Sharp: Amplified heart, feedback, synthesizers, bass saxophone
    Joe Grass: Pedal steel guitar
    Joshua Zubot: Violin


    FEATURED GUESTS

    Architek Percussion (Ben Duinker, Mark Morton, Ben Reimer, Alessandro Valiante): Microphone & mini amp (track 4)
    Jesse Zubot: Drum machine, synthesizer (tracks 4, 7)

    Recorded by Thierry Amar at Hotel2Tango in Montreal.
    Edited, mixed and mastered by Jesse Zubot.

    Artwork by Kevin Lo.

    Music inspired by and song titles derived from "The Heart" by Robert Creeley.