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POL 005-2024CD
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"In his novel The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro describes a mist of forgetfulness descending on the people, obscuring memory but not distorting historic truth. In contrast, Marc Barreca finds inspiration for the pieces of A Discourse Of Mist, not in forgotten truths but false science, false elements and a history of rumor, conjecture and untruth. Beyond Barreca's frequent exploration of obscure images, the subjects here are not simply obscure but literally false. Unexpectedly melodic, elegant, wide-ranging in tempo and coloration, A Discourse Of Mist exposes a haze of untruth within a deeply layered soundstage. Intriguing sonic images emerge from a vibrant alchemy: manipulated rich audio strata; hundreds of translucent layers; hand-built samples; synthesizer-based loops; contrasts in light and dark merged as a beautiful, false world construct. These sculpted, coherent, short-form pieces foster a narrative of clarity over misconception, comprehension over misunderstanding, reality over falsehood."
"Widescreen, pastoral visions of ambient music by West Coast US pioneer Marc Barreca of Savant esteem. RIYL Eno, K. Leimer, Phillip Jeck." --Boomkat
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POL 005-2022CD
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"Marc Barreca's Recordings Of Failing Light explores the subatomic matter of ordinary instrument sounds. Pianos, glass percussion, guitars, and feedback are atomized through sampling and granular processing in search of the audio equivalent of a negative image. In the end, these granular elements became the beds and pads for elaborate extrapolations of deconstructed melodic, rhythmic, patterned, and forward-looking sound -- and with the addition of analog sequencer and arpeggiator based textures, some tracks reach back to Barreca's days with Young Scientist. Perhaps as an acknowledgment of the aesthetic guiding Jon Hassell's Seeing Through Sound, Barreca's work here finds its origin in images. The gradations and modulation of light and dark in radiographs, rayograms, negatives, old black and white and sepia-tone photos all impart and inform a shaping influence to the waveforms and amplitudes of sound found in these twenty pieces. Heavily layered, simultaneously dense and expansive, Recordings Of Failing Light is the result of experiments conducted in a sonic version of the Hadron Collider. Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid-1970s. Recordings Of Failing Light is his eleventh solo album for PoL. His 1980 album, Twilight, reissued on vinyl in 2018, was one of the earliest releases on PoL. The Empty Bridge is his tenth solo album for the label. Recent releases include From The Gray And The Green (2019), Shadow Aesthetics (2018), and four collaborations with K. Leimer and two with Three Point Circle. Reissues include work on the acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture, the Cherry Red compilation of seminal U.S. electronic music and the 1983 cassette, Music Works For Industry, now on vinyl. His work is also included in the Collection of The British Library."
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LP
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SCTR 056LP
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"Scissor Tail presents the first vinyl issue of Marc Barreca's 1986 album The Sleeper Wakes, originally only released on cassette by the Seattle electronic ambient label Intrepid. Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid-1970s. His 1980 album, Twilight, reissued on vinyl in 2016, was one of the earliest releases on Palace Of Lights. Recent releases include Shadow Aesthetics (2018) and three collaborations with K. Leimer. Previous reissues include work on the acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture, the Cherry Red compilation of seminal U.S. electronic music and the 1983 cassette Music Works For Industry. His work is also included in the collection of The British Library. The Sleeper Wakes has been out of print for many years and Scissor Tail is very happy to remaster and reissue this great work that was ahead of it's time, employing analog treatments of sampled sounds arranged in a very interesting and intuitive way."
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POL 001-2021CD
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"With The Empty Bridge, Marc Barreca again exploits his distinct talent for translating landscapes into sound. The music was created in and reflects the influence of contrasting environments -- the beauty and stillness of the Cascade Mountains and the muted industrial nightscape of the Duwamish Waterway, complete with its massive, nowcondemned, empty freeway bridge. The pieces are sculpted from layers of synthesized and sampled instruments, field recordings and processed vinyl. With these sources, Barreca achieves a level of compositional sophistication that deftly combines elements of ambient, drone, noise, and sound art with contrapuntal lines running above and below the dense and shifting aural environments. Composed during a period of tranquil isolation -- isolation created by a global pandemic, a broken concrete link to the city, and a remote mountain cabin -- The Empty Bridge evokes immersive, evolving, contrasting landscapes."
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POL 003-2019CD
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"Moving in the directions that originated with the Environments recordings and evolved to become extended pieces like Klaus Schulze's Gewitter, Robert Henke's Studies For Thunder, Brian Eno's On Land and Steve Peter's Here-ings, the music of From The Gray And The Green finds its origins in landscapes. This time, landscapes that Marc Barreca knows as his home -- the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. These eleven pieces and three digital-only bonus tracks are sculpted from layers of synthesized and sampled instruments, field recordings and processed vinyl. Barreca tells us that 'My goal was to create immersive, evolving landscapes shaped by a dynamic past and viewed as if through the translucence of passing clouds.' From The Gray And The Green offers a music of contrasts and change, departing from traditional ideas of ambient to arrive in shifting landscapes of the strange and the beautiful. Includes an eight-page booklet and download card for the complete album and three bonus tracks. Mastered by James Savage. Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid-1970s. His 1980 album, Twilight, reissued on vinyl in 2016, was one of the earliest releases on Palace Of Lights. From The Gray And The Green is his ninth solo album for the label. Recent releases include Shadow Aesthetics (2018) and three collaborations with K. Leimer. Reissues include work on the acclaimed VOD box set American Cassette Culture, the Cherry Red compilation of seminal U.S. electronic music and the 1983 cassette, Music Works For Industry, now on vinyl. His work is also included in the collection of The British Library."
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POL 001-2017CD
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"Marc Barreca's seventh solo album for Palace of Lights extends his work with a broader and deeper palette of synthesized and sampled sound, including sources as diverse as prepared guitars, pianos, Indonesian metallophones and glass harmonica. The music of Aberrant Lens employs long MIDI delays, synced MIDI processing via MAX for Live and extreme warping of disparate looped sound sources driven into entirely new states. The results are new, coherent aural structures: music that questions traditional definitions of ambient and electronic forms. And, to the educated ear, within this search for innovation and experimentation Aberrant Lens reveals many of Barreca's earliest influences. Even when integrated in thoroughly non-retro compositions, the hints of homage to Cluster and the first Fripp & Eno releases inhabit these twelve new settings. Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid-1970s. His 1980 album, Twilight, was one of the earliest releases on Palace of Lights. His cassette-era album Music Works for Industry is being reissued by the RVNG spin-off Freedom To Spend, and his early cassette work is included in the upcoming VOD box set American Cassette Culture, which also features Marc's early electronic music group Young Scientist. His work is included in the collection of The British Library."
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POL 004-2015CD
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"Released in 2015. The impulse to invent and realize new music, new forms and a broader comprehension of sound has proven to be a permanent aspect of Marc Barreca's work. From childhood music lessons, to tape and electronic experimentation with his group Young Scientist, to becoming an early participant in cassette culture and the independent movement, Marc has developed a large body of work that moves with and ahead of the changes that music has undergone in the past four decades. With Beneath The Mirrored Surface, Marc continues his quest to create deep and shifting aural spaces by merging the abstract rhythmic warmth of early analog synthesis with the complexity and timbral beauty of acoustic instruments and natural sound. Barreca extracted and reshaped rhythms and textures from field recordings, decades-old world folk recordings and acoustic instrument loops. These sources were first converted into MIDI data using Ableton Live and then transformed and manipulated with Max/MSP. Hundreds of these source clips were then blended and arranged with layered and looped digital synthesizer and sampler tracks. The result is a dense, rich world of refracted light and shifting shadow. Mastered by Taylor Deupree."
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POL 005LP
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"Marc Barreca has been creating and performing electronic music since the mid 1970s. Following recent vinyl reissues of Barreca's 1983 cassette Music Works for Industry via the RVNG spin-off Freedom To Spend, and a compilation of early cassette tracks on Vinyl On Demand's acclaimed American Cassette Culture, Palace of Lights has reissued the artist's first album for the label. 1980's Twilight was one of the earliest releases on Palace of Light, and is part of an ongoing program of documenting the roots of the Pacific Northwest independent impulse. This remastered and expanded edition includes one previously unreleased track on the LP and an additional six bonus tracks via the enclosed download card. Twilight struck out in a distinct direction, taking steps into the ambient and industrial while carrying along a phonographic sensibility. Using sounds derived from a variety of acoustic as well as electronic sources, Twilight foreshadowed the diversity and pliability of sampled, industrial and lowercase musics, ensuring the album was remarkably prescient and remains resiliently fresh to this day. Textura (reviewing Tremble) said 'Barreca's lava-like soundworlds are heady constructions whose sounds spill forth in thick clusters and collectively present themselves as heaving conglomerations of shape-shifting sound... a word like organic is less applicable than geologic, given the immense tectonic force with which its material convulses.'"
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