Pink Pearl by Howard Stelzer & Frans de Waard

I'm not going to tell about the music contained on this CD by describing how Frans de Waard and I made it. That would be both tedious and misleading. What does process matter? Frans and I traded some sounds through the mail. We played together several times, in several cities, over many years. After a while, all those sounds became "Pink Pearl". If that sounds like a familiar story, it's because the idea of a postal collaboration was a hoary old noise cliche even in 1996, when Frans and I first started corresponding. But sound-recycling is such an integral part of both of our work, it should be no surprise that it's how we made this album too. I could (but won't) describe the objects that we moved around (tapes, computers, microphones… you know, the usual stuff), or compare how we've moved similar (or different) objects in the past and/or with other collaborators, put that dull information into a context of other artists who've moved similar objects in similar ways… but does any of that convey the emotional/narrative musical idea(s) that "Pink Pearl" attempts to articulate? Nah. You're too smart to be taken in by such nonsense. I know, I know… you still want to imagine the technology before you take in the content. So here's a nugget or two: Frans and I composed "Pink Pearl" over the course of several months by parsing, extracting, and altering elements from all the sounds we've ever made together for the past 18 years. Hendrix played a guitar. It wouldn't be news that one of his albums features a guitar, because they all do. So if "Pink Pearl" is no more or less than another articulation of process, then I'm probably a hack who doesn't need to make any more music. Which might be true anyway. But what the hell. This is the record we made. We like it. I'd tell you why, but the answer is coming out of your speakers.

(-) Howard Stelzer