City of Rats

Track Listing:

1.Torches in the Swamp (07:31)
2. we have built a machine that feeds on the skin of the face and which seals all the orifices of one’s body with surgical precision (01:04)
3. their identity papers burst into bloom, displaying delicate petals of pink, gold, and white (02:45)
4. White Kids in Hollywood (02:25)
5. City of Rats (01:25)
6. the skull which is a mouth and drinks deeply (09:37)

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Finally a new release. I have been busy with the end of the semester and the new full-time working schedule. But the work has not been entirely unproductive, as my various interviews have provided good tape stock to draw from.

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The politics of a culture are never separate from the aesthetics of its terror. America has its second identity, buried in the silence between intentional sounds. You can see it sometimes in the nuanced body language of a shopper or a tourist. Or, of course, when you come across an abandoned mine in the forest. But the auditory aspect is harder to grasp. I find that I come closest when the microphone makes contact with the object, and when the space between words is amplified. There is also a special kind of meditation in sifting through the terrible things which we obsessively document and record: the voices of serial killers, of pilots on a crashing plane, the dry-tongued press conferences discussing such disasters. There is a way to get at the layer of nightmare. To translate it, though vaguely.