the release

anyone who has followed [ parvoart ]’s releases over the past 2 years will pretty much have nailed the label as the soundtrack of october to march – autumnal maybe, wintry for sure. and not wanting to be untrue to ourselves we present our second compilation advent, a meditation and celebration of all things wintry.

new york is a pretty cold place in winter as anyone who’s been there can tell you. resident of that city stephen spera opens advent with a suitably seasonal sound collage that proves he is the hitherto overlooked link in an axis linking william basinski to kenneth kirchner – not surprising as stephen is friends of both artists. for will long, one half of acclaimed duo celer it has been a devastating year, with the tragic death of his wife and musical partner dani banqet-long. we are honoured that will found the muse to record this brand new work – one of his first since dani’s passing. this piece has great very personal meaning, as the field recording that permeates the track is of will - alone - taking one of the dogs the couple own for a walk through fresh snow last winter. the paradox of being alone and not alone, past and yet present (as memories) fuels this bittersweet track. the entire release is dedicated to her memory.

someone who is also not unacquainted with snow is french artist neve, who lives high up in the jura mountains in eastern france. his track morgan is a deceptively fluid, complex recreation of his environment using the blend of improvisation, field recordings, loop manipulations, analogue hardware and DSP processing that made his mini album on [ parvoart ], centigrade, so captivating.

2009 was a difficult year for many people, and this is reflected in the personal mood of both john r carlson’s and porzellan’s tracks. interestingly both of utilize the same palette – piano and strings, but to differing ends – john’s no time no place, recorded as a stark live improvisation in the rehearsal halls of the schwerin state theatre foregrounds the piano over a solitary violin line, sounding almost like anton webern had he remained just within this side of conventional scales, whereas porzellan takes his baroque violin as the basis of frozen feet, electronically manipulating his lines into a fog of melancholy through which the piano tentatively emerges.

[ parvoart ] hasn’t featured very much guitar on previous releases, something we changed with m. ostermeier’s  percolate mini album – he returns with another slice of calm beauty with sagewood. the tremolo organ pad and airy guitar should please anyone with more than a pleasing interest in mark nelson’s pan*american project. the serenity of snow is similarly reflected in fellow american and first time [ parvoart ] artist r.kitch’s siskiyou – two interweaving guitar lines, bathed in tremolo and delay float in the space between the durutti column and loren connors.

[ parvoart ] tea boy / gopher (and label owner) duncan ó ceallaigh offers a sparing but evocative winter soundscape by means of a piano improvisation over a slowly evolving loop and sampled vinyl strings, which fades to allow french artist alpe to provide a breathtakingly beautiful update on brian eno’s another green world, the analog synths and e-bow guitar creating an uplifting and modestly epic (if anything can be as such) mood to close the set on an optimistic note.

the artwork for advent is integral to the release – to mark the end of the first series of [ parvoart ] releases, the cover takes a different form to its predecessors, and If it looks vaguely familiar, it is because it is a deliberate homage to joy division’s elegiac atmosphere single. this, combined with the photo taken by dóc at a graveyard in a village near to [ parvoart ]’s  wismar HQ and the extensive use of white all seemed a dignified response to dani’s passing as well as being thematically appropriate.

as we hope you will agree, advent is a remarkably consistent and unified piece of work for a compilation album. in our humble opinion advent is an even stronger release than [ parvo ] art, and its themes of looking to the past and future, and of melancholy and hope make it a satisfying, fitting and very personal conclusion to [ parvoart ]’s ‘0’ series of releases. [ parvoart ] recordings is again very grateful to all the artists for their contributions and to you for listening.

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