Tom Soloveitzik - Air 2011 >>> New release out now on Hedim
Digital album includes a PDF of a 13-page English booklet with texts and images by Tom Soloveitzik.
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Tom Soloveitzik - portable recorder, smartphone, microphones, tenor & soprano saxophones
Mastering - Amir Bolzman
Produced by Shaul Kohn
Front cover by Avihai Mizrahi
Booklet designed by:
Matthew Olczak (London 2011)
Avihai Mizrahi (Tel-Aviv 2020)
Thanks: Shaul Kohn, for his friendship
T, M and E, for their love and support
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Tom writes:
[Hebrew ↡]
It is almost impossible these days to separate between the personal and the political, between artistic work and the space where it takes place. It seems that the cycle of violence and racism that shadows our lives here, day after day, keeps growing. The recordings for this album began around moments that we unfortunately witness too often. In the summer of 2011, the London riots erupted after local police shot and killed Mark Duggan, a 29 year old black man. Earlier that year, a wave of anti-government protests swept across the Arab world, in the hope of bringing a much desired change; a brief moment of optimism suspended in air, grasping for a foothold, and slipping away.
קשה עד בלתי אפשרי להפריד בימים אלה בין האישי לפוליטי; בין עשייה אמנותית לבין החלל בו היא מתקיימת. נדמה שמעגל האלימות והגזענות המלווה את חיינו כאן יום-יום רק מתגבר. ההקלטות לאלבום זה החלו סביב רגעים, להם אנו עדים לעיתים תכופות מידי. בקיץ 2011 החלו מהומות בלונדון לאחר שהמשטרה המקומית ירתה והרגה את מרק דוגן, צעיר שחור בן 29. מוקדם יותר באותה שנה החל גל של התקוממות אנטי ממשלתית ברחבי העולם הערבי במטרה להביא לשינוי נכסף. רגע של אופטימיות עמד [לרגע] באוויר, מנסה להיאחז בו, ונשמט.
Air 2011 זמין כעת לרכישה בהוצאת הדים. לאלבום מצורפת חוברת בת 13 עמודים באנגלית עם טקסטים ודימויים מאת תום סולוביציק.
Reviews
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noise not music blog:
Tom Soloveitzik’s Air 2011 is an ode to human insignificance, a love letter to the cosmic confusions that rock us every day, a deconstructive distortion of time and space. The recordings were precipitated after a strange experience Soloveitzik had upon returning home to London, in which he “was thrown back to the memories of moments and sounds from [his] first stay, as if [his] personal timeline had shrunk and time had folded into itself.” Shrinking and folding are just two ways to describe the forcefully structural actions Soloveitzik performs on his sound materials, which largely consist of an arsenal of saxophones and portable recorders. Brief opener “Two Jets Over Tahrir square” works with a Seth Cooke-like polarity of external exhalation and interior electronics, while “B-Park Blues (for Toshiya Tsunoda)” echoes works by the title-honored artist such as Snared 60 Cuts or Ridge of Undulation as a closely recorded noteless saxophone breath mimics claustrophobic urban wind currents atop the spacious sonic environment of an outdoor park. The disparate and opposite are forcibly affixed to each other, creating stubborn paradoxes while our minds attempt to reconcile yawning gaps in the physicality of the recording: the dark, bottomless, uncrossable chasms between our selves and the universe.
Brian Olewnick
Tom Soloveitzik has a tough, intricate and unusual new release, 'Air 2011', on the Hedim label, combining field recordings made during the Arab Spring in that year, subtly and movingly combined, sometimes, with soft, somber, whispering saxophone. Really well paced and throughout, refreshingly spacious and uncrowded. Check it out.
