SMOKEY EMERY
QUARTZ EP (IQR002)
Edt. of 300 on 7″ vinyl | Released DEC 12 2012
Purchase 7″ EP @ IQR STORE // DL @ IQR bandcamp
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» » » 7″ EP • $8 (+s/h) « « «
Pressing of 300 on thick 7″ black vinyl, heavy art cardstock duotone b&w
“disaster” collage fold-out covers by Smokey Emery himself
US (+$2.5) 
//////// CANADA (+$5) //////// WORLD (+$12)
***Digital DL available @ the IQR bandcamp***
ALBUM DESCRIPTION
Smokey Emery’s Quartz EP is a bona fide document of sonorities from the purgatorial regions. Distorted and catchy tape loops that take you from the inter-planes of the mind to the carnival, where the festivities seem at once sinister and endearing beneath the changing light of sooty reverb and effectual tape hiss. These deceptive washes of underwater tones falling in and out of tune are placid enough to meditate to though also project a menacing, even premonitory air. Unlike many drone kingdom tape-loop albums, there is also enough substance and subtly here to sharpen your mind against – just when you think you’ve been listening to a stable phrase for 30 seconds you perceive, buried in the glowing embers and vapor, a yawning organ concerto or an analogue gear malfunction rescued into exquisite loop patterning. Over continuous listens a depth of elements continually rise from the initially dark and watery abyss to the grey-scaled and disorienting surface.
This music is as much evocative of the sharp winter cold as it is the mirages of summer heat, the murky deep as much as the smoggy zenith, and the charming mechanics of dusty analogue gear as much as a honed sense of intuitive craftsmanship directed toward allaying arrangements of saturated sonic material. Quartz reads the ambiance of the nether world through the split light of the celestial sphere. So much wickedness and tenderness.
SELECTED PRESS for QUARTZ
“…a sound that is cavernous yet claustrophobic and is lonely as it is timeless. Like lost transmissions being emitted from some long abandoned hotel…totally entrancing. – PORTALS
“…a pastoral grey affair, lush with church organ ambience and analog equipment malfunction, a sort of Carnival of Lost Souls meets the Sinking of the Titanic…a foggy underwater wash of ocean liner doom and the muddled voices of once heralded memories of happier times.” – aQuarius recOrds
“Ostensibly a tape collage taken from original and found sounds, QUARTZ more closely resembles a cubist sketch seized from the visual realm and atomized into sound.” – The Unhappy Clef
“It may sound old, but it’s new, or perhaps the other way around; time, space and source are blurred beyond recognition. The Caretaker’s early works come to mind: fine abstractions that somehow manage to deliver substance.” – A Closer Listen
“…a theoretical stripe of minimalism, disguised beneath the affective textures of copious effects…a wonderful contrast between a joyful noise and a noise more purely kept.” – Animal Psi
PRODUCTION NOTES
• Pressing of 300 7″ records (33.3rpm) by EKS / thick duotone b&w folder-cover of dueling catastrophe-collages by Daniel Hipólito / layout & design by jon s.
• Recorded by Guy Taylor / All sounds by Daniel Hipólito
• Mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market Mastering
Smokey Emery / Daniel Hipólito
{ photo by Alex Kacha // dope dungeon }