The Fade by Kevin Shea
This composition is about time-travel.
Some stellar sounds were created in 1969...but the impulse and meaning behind those sounds has echoed/faded-out through the decades. Through metaphor in practice, I wanted to create a way to directly engage with this process of disappearance.
Each track corresponds to one of 5 decades over the last 50 years. The first bars on track one slowly echo on...ever-fading out throughout the album until your current present-day noise environment eventually fully dominates your aural soundscape once again (the source code has disintegrated in real time). Set your preferred playback volume once you press play at the beginning of the album, then allow playback to continue without any further volume adjustments. If you don't follow these exact instructions, you will never be allowed into the highly exclusive Kevin Shea Cool Club.
The Fade is made up of 50 cycles...one cycle per year from 1969-2019. Each cycle is comprised of a 2-bar form that subtly mutates as it is repeated 12 times...one repeat for each month.
How do you know when each cycle has passed? A kind-of voice-exhaling synth chord is played, as you will hear on the first beat of this album ... you will hear it again 12 cycles later to signify 1970's arrival. Also: on every other cycle, chime sounds will accompany with the synth/voice-exhale sound (you will also hear chimes on the first beat of this record). So each time you hear the combo of chimes/synth-voice exhale, that means 2 years have passed.
Inspirations for this music come from the time-stretching drumming stye of West Java's jaipongnan and cyber-fused annomolies looming on the horizon via dx-7 daze...all filtered through the staunch rigor mortis of model-d savants.
I like to think of these sounds as sonic excerpts whispered the world over in past/present vaporizing in perpetuity.
Credits
K.Shea - composition, synths, electronic drums, engineering, recording, mixing, mastering and cover art (depicting a rotting conquistador frozen in time on the path between centuries). Recorded at U--NOR in The Big Apple.
