AB
Serious drone pop classic in waiting here. That it was built on an SK1 makes it just more beautiful and will set the synth gear heads spinning. Super deep, super detailed flickering pop feedback. Reminds me of the 1st album by Surface of the Earth. Another masterpiece created on limited gear. Think I just found the album of 2022. Congratulations x
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
$9USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Deluxe 180gram vinyl pressed at Optimal (DE) comes in 350gsm Arktika jacket + 300gsm Arktika inner both printed matte LE UV. Includes DL card. Artwork + texts by Steve Bates.
Subscribe
now to receive all the new
music
Constellation Records releases,
including
13 back-catalog items,
delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android.
You’ll also get access to
subscriber-only
exclusives.
Learn more.
Musician and sound/video installation artist Steve Bates presents a striking solo ambient/noise album of melodic smear, radiostatic blur, panoramic noise clouds and dissolving tones. Made primarily with the self-imposed limitation of a Casio SK-1, All The Things That Happen showcases the more deliberate, intensive, maximalist side of Bates' wide-ranging sonic aesthetic and practice. An isolation record (like so many), it combines an ineffable melancholy with claustrophobic tension and simmering political rage. Constructed from layers of glistening distortion-drenched melody, pulsing and droning oscillation, bursts of blown-out chords, sweeps of static and sheets of crackling hiss, Bates has made a dynamic, ardent, iridescent noise album of impressive depth and underlying devastation.
"This was supposed to be an ambient record; quiet, minimal and sad. These tracks all started off that way but I kept reaching for more texture and noise. Somehow the noisier the record got, the less sad it was also. I was listening to, and loving, a lot of music by Andrew Chalk and I had finished a year-long run of listening to Eno’s Ambient 1 and 4. I prefer On Land to Music for Airports although I love both. On Land just has a darkness and uncertainty that appeals to me. Adding more noise also got me excited about ways this material could be played live even though it also felt like that could never happen again. In 2022, I opened for Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Saskatoon to give it a try and was pleasantly pleased to hear it all live and loud."
A fixture of Winnipeg's burgeoning anarcho-punk and social justice community in the 80s-90s, Bates played in hardcore and indie rock bands (XOXO, Bulletproof Nothing) while contemporaneously continuing to fiddle obsessively with the shortwave radio his father bought him as a child — sensibilities that continue to meld and inform his sound work to this day. Bates founded the Send + Receive Festival in 1998, a crucial development in putting Winnipeg on the map for avant music and experimental sound art, which he helmed for seven years. Moving to Tiohti:áke/Montréal in 2005 he took on the Sound Coordinator position at Hexagram (Concordia University), released solo and duo work on ORAL_records and two albums with his Black Seas Ensemble on The Dim Coast, while pursuing myriad other ongoing audio research, installation and collaborative projects. His exhibition and site-specific works have been presented throughout North America and Europe, Chile and Senegal.
Bates relocated to Treaty 6/Saskatoon in the fall of 2019, a return to the Canadian Prairies just before pandemic that also profoundly shaped the solitary, immersive, assiduous practice that yielded All The Things That Happen: his most purposive, powerful, purely ‘recorded’ work.
Thanks for listening.
credits
released September 23, 2022
Made mostly with a Casio SK-1 + computer, electronics, effects.
Recorded and mixed at Reflected Light over by Massey Park, Treaty 6 / Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi near Milan.
The organ on “September through September” was recorded in Valparaiso, Chile, on a Hammond Stage II Rhythm at José Pérez de Arce and Francisca Pastor’s place on Galos near Plaza San Luis. This track is dedicated to Victor Jara.
Images by SB. Design by Ian Ilavsky and SB.
Thank you/danke/grazie/gracias/hvala/merci:
jake moore, Sadie, Ari, Addie, Bookla, Giuseppe Ielasi, Timothy Herzog, Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt, Joshua Bonnetta, Chad Munson, Douglas Moffat, Velibor Božovic, Theodore Turner, Greg MacPherson, Michaela Grill, José and Francisca, Eric Mattson, Don & Ian & Ziad and all at Constellation.
We acknowledge the support of FACTOR, the Government of Canada, and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Nous reconnaissons l’appui de FACTOR, le gouvernement du Canada et les radiodiffuseurs privés du Canada.
supported by 337 fans who also own “All The Things That Happen”
First half is difficult and beautiful; second half is mournful and ethereal. There are deep movements within. Jessica Moss is an amazing artist. aconitum vulparia
supported by 333 fans who also own “All The Things That Happen”
Does anyone have a source/link to a translation of the Yiddish (and other) lyrics? Love the atmosphere and musicianship on this album, yet I'm confident I would enjoy it more if I could understand the words. Thanks in advance! thegreatgrackle
The latest from the aptly-named bleak lives in the dark valley between musique concrete & power electronics, stark and harrowing. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 19, 2021
DC-based musician Carni Klirs leads listeners on a series of soothing, self-guided journeys that pull from post-rock and ambient drone. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 30, 2021