Created for painter David Stoupakis’s solo exhibition at the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, ‘These Predicaments’ draws on drones, ambient textures and slowly developing melodies to bring another dimension to David’s otherworldly paintings.
reviews:
From Modisti
The music on this release was composed for a solo exhibition of painter David Stoupakis in Los Angeles by one Geoff Gersh. I never heard of him, although this is his second solo CD of Deep Listening Institute. Gersh is a composer and guitarist, but also uses field recordings, reel-to-reel tape recordings, zither and bowed metal files. Not that I could tell really from listening to the five pieces on this CD. It doesn’t sound like that at all. The music is best described as isolationist music – although I think hardly anyone uses that these days anymore. Dark ambient drone, then? Well, why not. The sounds on this release are highly textured, transformed by using electronics perhaps, and the result is a beautiful, dense release that also a light tone it, like floating a few centimeters above the ground. An excellent release of fine, dark drone music. Music to fill your environment with in a very peaceful manner, like great ambient music should do. The real thing, a textbook release.
Some people (see elsewhere) should take note of such things. (FdW)
From Monsieur Delire Blog
A beautiful record of experimental ambient music made of drones and delicate slow melodies. Not the kind of CD you expect from the Deep Listening label and its usual fare of free improvisation and more academic-sounding electronic music. Still, Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening philosophy sure applies to the rich soundscapes painted by Geoff Gersh, especially since they were designed to accompany a solo exhibition by painter David Stoupakis (responsible for the cover artwork too). Subtle, elegant, a bit disquieting. A fine discovery.
From The Sound Projector
Also from NYC, the composer-performer Geoff Gersh with a CD of sad droney music which he creates with bowed guitars, zithers, tapes and treated field recordings. The music on These Predicaments (DEEP LISTENING DL 42 2009) is specifically intended to act as an aural accompaniment to the gloomy paintings of David Stoupakis, one of which appears on the cover – depicting a very put-upon man-child Pied Piper whose flute-driven project to rid the town of rats appears to be going horribly wrong. I can see why Deep Listening might be attracted to a man who uses metal to bow an instrument (who can forget the 1989 metal cello LP by Robert Rutman on Pogus Productions?). Gersh’s music on the other hand, while accomplished and highly polished, is not as abstract or abrasive as that, and feels a bit too narrative and sentimental for this listener.
Geoff Gersh explores the sonic boundaries of the electric guitar with and without the aide of electronic devices and found
objects to produce sounds one would normally not associate with the guitar.
He performs live music to silent films monthly at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg with his bands Black Lodge & Reel Orchestrette and has 3 CDs released on Pauline Olivers's Deep Listening Label....more
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