We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

YZTSE

by Ellwood Epps

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

1.
essence 04:03
2.
doing 04:01
3.
doubt 04:05
4.
5.
6.
The Crust 03:29
7.
8.
sorrow 04:28
9.
inviolata 02:35
10.

about

All music by Ellwood Epps, SOCAN except The Crust, by Steve Lacy

Recorded in fall of 2008
Engineer: Emmanuel Maddan

Photographs by Johann Schlager
120mm pinhole camera
instagram.com/johann__schlager
flickr.com/photos/johann_schlager

More information on the Silophone project:
www.undefine.ca/en/projects/silophone/

This is Mr. E Records #13

credits

released June 5, 2020

In the autumn of 2008 I was invited by composer and sound artist Emmanuel Madan to make some music in silo #5 in Montréal's old port, as part of the Silophone project. We put on hardhats and headlamps and entered the huge abandonned grain elevator complex. I climbed up into bin 442, and found a way to situate myself on its concrete, funnel-shaped bottom, while Emmanuel left me and started the long climb up steel stairs to the little engineering booth he'd set up on the platform at the top, with a microphone suspended down into the bin.

When he was ready to record, he looked down into the bin to say 'ready', and he was so far up there that he looked comically tiny. I gave him half a minute to return to the recording booth, switched off my light, and began to play in the pitch black cold. I played for about an hour, pausing to let the reverberations settle, empty the condensation from my trumpet, and begin another piece. When I was ready for a break (it was impossible to stand up and stretch inside the bin), Emmanuel came down and helped me out. We did two sets like this, and called it a day.

It was amazing and wonderful to be inside this hundred year old industrial relic, now quiet and dark, and contemplate how busy and noisy it would have been when it was active loading and offloading grain from ships in the port. The sheer scope of the place, inside and out, was awe-inspiring. I biked home to l'Envers and soon received the audio files.

Twelve years later, I'm at home during the Coronavirus and the most massive protests of my lifetime are happening in the US and around the world. I've taken the time to catalogue 20 years worth of recordings and have begun to release some of the more interesting music on bandcamp. At a time when it's hard (but vital) (but is it possible?) to make sense of myself and the world, it somehow feels healthy to listen to these. To what I've done, whom I've met, where I've been, and to make some use of that process. I don't know if editing an old recording, writing about it, and releasing it online is really a creative act, but it does feel like part of the work that I'm involved in as a creative musician, and I need to keep that moving and alive.

I don't know what effect this music will have on listeners, and I don't know how useful it will be to put yet another record out into a hyper-saturated world. There won't be a 'record launch', and the nature of where this music made and how it was recorded means that it can't be done again. But then I remeber that music is never about what we see, that there always needs to be faith that some of what comes into us will get through the instruments and make it through the ears of whoever is there. If the music is moving well, it shouldn't stay in the ears very long.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Ellwood Epps Boston, Massachusetts

Ellwood Epps is an improvising trumpet player, teacher, and musical organizer who lives in Boston.

contact / help

Contact Ellwood Epps

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Ellwood Epps, you may also like: