Corona Borealis Longplay Singles Series
Constellation's first-ever digital series. 16 artists with new longplaying singles and accompanying experimental film/video, commissioned as part of our pandemic/post-capitalist response for label-affiliated musicians under current conditions. Tracks are exclusive to Bandcamp and PWYC for the week of release, along with sale pricing on artist’s related Constellation digital discography. 100% of revenue from all digital sales goes to the artist. Winter 2021 Corona Borealis tracks drop on Thursdays throughout January/February. Revisit our Fall 2020 entries here.
Corona Borealis Longplay Singles #10 of 16
Thursday 21 January 2021
Eric Chenaux
“3 Stars On Mountain Of Doom” is exclusive to Bandcamp and PWYC for first week of release. Eric Chenaux’s entire digital discography is also on sale at Bandcamp during this time, with each album available for $6 (compared to our regular pricing at $9 per title).
We’re delighted to share the 10th Corona Borealis track: Eric Chenaux’s blissful “3 Stars On Mountain Of Doom” with its accompanying short film by Eric Cazdyn. “3 Stars On Mountain Of Doom” showcases a trifecta of Chenaux’s beautifully fried guitar work: electric, nylon-string, and bowed guitars meld together effortlessly, while the addition of pastoral field recordings infuses the track with a bucolic sense of reverie. Cazdyn’s film is a beguiling visual companion, where some sly camera work lends a sense of whimsy and intrigue that’s difficult to pin down. He does let us in on one clever technique in his artist statement – scroll down and give that a read. All in all, “3 Stars On Mountain Of Doom” is an enchanting new offering from these longtime collaborators and it makes a splendid addition to the Corona Borealis series.
Eric Chenaux: recording, mixing, electric guitar, bowed guitar, nylon-string guitar, various electronics, field-recordings.
Video: Eric Cazdyn
“3 Stars On Mountain Of Doom” was recorded for Richard Youngs’ 50th Birthday (a limited edition of 1 compilation CD entitled 50 Years Of Youngs) curated by Madeleine Hynes. Most of this piece is a reflection upon Richard’s Three Handed Star released on his No Fans label in 2008. I cannot count on this being true or not but I believe that he recorded it after acquiring a concertina or melodeon or some such thing, using the recording process to get to know the instrument. I have always had a fondness for this untethered reverie of his. The last section is an instrumental version of Mountain Of Doom, which Richard wrote and recorded with his son Sorely. The lyrics are fried and the song is an oddly touching and beautiful one – one of those songs that seems to just drop into the world without a hitch. Thank you Richard, Madeleine and Sorley for giving me an aberrant place to play around.
– Eric Chenaux –
During these COVID days I keep thinking about Buster Keaton. Especially a scene in which he is leaning against a building, minding his own business. Soon, a cop appears to tell him to move along. He does, but at the moment he stops leaning against the building, the building collapses. Today, it is not just time that is out of joint (Hamlet), but space as well (Keaton). And the arbitrariness of both reminds us that there is no permanent state of things–no built and unbuilt, no forwards and backwards. Yes, there is a dominant capitalist logic today that informs reality and is desperate to orient us to its pathetic little desires. But this logic is not stable and can always come crashing down. Eric’s music reminds me that there is no fixed order of things. No natural progress. And when we subtract these false orientations, something clears so that we do not even notice that the whole video was shot in reverse and that the dancer’s every movement is backwards. Or, more to the point, it is not just that we do not notice these things, but that these things (forwards-backwards, movement-stillness) do not exist in the first place.
– Eric Cazdyn –
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Corona Borealis Longplay Singles #9 of 16
Thursday 14 January 2021
T. Griffin
“The Smell of Wet Clay” is exclusive to Bandcamp and PWYC for first week of release.
Brooklyn-based composer T. Griffin has been crafting evocative, atmospheric film music for over 20 years and we’re thrilled to welcome him to the CST roster. Griffin’s upcoming LP The Proposal is now available for preorder (more on that here), but in the meantime we invite you to check out his Corona Borealis track “The Smell of Wet Clay”. Griffin’s sublime instrumental compositions are brought to life by an all-star cast of guest musicians, including Matana Roberts, Jason Ajemian (Helado Negro, Jaimie Branch), and Jim White (Xylouris White, The Dirty Three), who add rich detail and texture to Griffin’s own contributions on banjo, guitar, synthesizers, and field recordings. The track’s accompanying short film is produced by conceptual artist, writer, and filmmaker Jill Magid, offering up an enticing glimpse of the collaborative relationship that she and Griffin explore fully on The Proposal LP, which soundtracks Magid’s artworld docu-drama of the same name. Note that all preorders of The Proposal on our website and Bandcamp will receive an immediate download for “The Smell of Wet Clay” as a special bonus track.
Directed by: Jill Magid
Edited by: Hannah Buck
Cinematography by: Jarred Alterman
Music by T. Griffin
Jason Ajemian: Bass
Matana Roberts: Alto Saxophone
Jim White: Drums
T. Griffin: Banjo, Mexico City Field Recordings, Guitar, Synthesizers
“The Smell of Wet Clay” is a collaboration with the conceptual artist, writer and filmmaker Jill Magid, and film editor Hannah Buck that stems from our work together on Jill’s 2018 film The Proposal. Constellation will be releasing the soundtrack album for The Proposal this summer.
An extraordinary hybrid documentary, The Proposal follows Jill’s deep and sly artistic engagement with the work of architect Luis Barragán. I’ll let that film speak for itself when you seek it out (please do) but for now the important thing to know is that The Proposal is, in its way, a thriller, and a thriller has no time to pause.
So, when the idea of making “The Smell of Wet Clay” for this Longplay series surfaced this summer, in the middle of a pandemic which has put everything on pause, it offered the chance to revisit a collaborative connection that was built in proximity and under pressure, this time at a distance, but with a new spirit of contemplation.
The music itself was made in a tiny cabin I had rented on the Massachusetts coast this August while exiled from my Brooklyn studio due to a virus-cursed construction project. I couldn’t invite musicians to join me physically, but I had the original recording sessions for The Proposal, which were a loose and collaborative affair, to build from.
Among those recordings were some spare, humid basic tracks I had made with Jim White on Drums, Jason Ajemian on Bass and Matana Roberts on saxophone that resonated both with the lovely footage that Jill and Hannah were sending me, and also with the weird state of solitude and dislocation that the Coronavirus has birthed. In deconstructing those tracks and rebuilding them to create the music for this project, I layered a choir of bowed banjo, electronics, field recordings and guitar over Jim, Jason and Matana, and in the process got to bring some collaborators that I love into that small cabin with me.
– T. Griffin –
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REVISIT THE FALL 2020 CORONA BOREALIS TRACKS
Corona Borealis Longplay Singles Series
Fall 2020
Markus Floats • 01 October
Efrim Manuel Menuck • 08 October
Jessica Moss • 15 October
Jason Sharp • 22 October
T. Gowdy • 29 October
Fly Pan Am • 05 November
JOYFULTALK • 12 November
Joni Void + N NAO • 19 November
Winter 2021
T. Griffin • 14 January
Eric Chenaux • 21 January
Deadbeat & Martin Bakero • 28 January
Automatisme • 04 February
Light Conductor • 11 February
Off World • 18 February
Sam Shalabi • 25 February
Jerusalem In My Heart • 04 March
Corona Borealis Longplay Singles Series
Constellation's first-ever digital series. 16 artists with new longplaying singles and accompanying experimental film/video, commissioned as part of our pandemic/post-capitalist response for label-affiliated musicians under current conditions. Tracks are exclusive to Bandcamp and PWYC for the week of release, along with sale pricing on artist’s related Constellation digital discography. 100% of revenue from all digital sales goes to the artist. Winter 2021 Corona Borealis tracks drop on Thursdays throughout January/February. Revisit our Fall 2020 entries here.