A Year With 13 Moons (CD)
Barcode: 184923119824
A master of romantic abstraction, Jefre CantuLedesma is not new to the scene. In fact, he's been releasing a steady stream of music for nearly twenty years. With the brilliant album A Year With 13 Moons, however, the everprolific Ledesma appears to be hitting a new high. Or low, depending on how you like to see things. More on that later. First, some background. \nBorn raised in Texas, Ledesma's formative artistic years were spent studying painting sculpture in San Francisco. He began playing releasing music in 1996 and has developed a steady relationship as a collaborator he's released notable collaborations with Liz Harris (aka Grouper) as Raum, with Alexis Georgopoulos in his Arp project and with their ensemble The Alps, as well as filmmaker Paul Clipson. Ledesma also founded the influential label, Root Strata, who have released music by Oneohtrix Point Never, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Grouper, and continue to release new and archival works. \nA Year With 13 Moons, a nod to a Rainer Werner Fassbinder film, was recorded at the Headlands Center for the Arts, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco where he and Clipson were artist in residence. It was a time of major transition. As he describes it, "the time at the Headlands was a real gift of space, time and being cared for. This allowed me to create music in a way I never had before, on a dayin, dayout basis for hours on end. I stopped caring about end results and fell in love with the process. I learned how to let the music create itself in a way, to lead me rather than trying to force it down a path. I would start each session with a simple rhythm, or sound or a guitar riff see where that led - it was cathartic, freeing and ultimately really transformed my approach to music making. In the end I was left with literally hours hours of recordings. A Year With 13 Moons was culled from these and formed while traveling the week after I left the residence. Using a friend's reel to reel tape player, Cantu employed electric guitar, modular synthesizer, drum machine and concrËte sounds from his surroundings at the Headlands, recorded while walking to the studio, cooking in the kitchen, talking with friends, the ocean, films he was watching, driving in a car. Everything was record stereo to tape. There is only one track with overdubs otherwise each take is a true document of an entirely live take. \nThe result is gorgeous, haunting and sprawling. A companion to his last full length LP, Love is A Stream, (Type, 2010), 13 Moons, is a dense, swirling mass. A bookend to the end of a relationship. To say 13 Moons is comprised of songs" might not be entirely accurate. They're closer to transmissions from a satellite of love. Opener ""The last time I saw your face"" sets the tone. A bittersweet goodbye letter that unites guitars and modular synthesizer to widescreen ends over the course of its 8 and half minutes. It works dramatically well as an opening statement, and also as a sum
- Release-Date: : 2/10/15
- Format: CD
- Genre: Rock
