Limited Edition Dark Blue Cassette Cassette + Digital Album —

LIMITED EDITION OF 50

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Dark blue super ferric cassette tape with a black & white pull-out insert featuring 10 surrealist landscape prints made from custom hand-carved wood blocks by Steve Goodwin (aka Skeleton Zoo) depicting the simulated paradoxes that saturate the album.



All tapes include a one-time use code to download the album in any format.



ONLY AVAILABLE ON BANDCAMP



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Includes unlimited streaming of Hilsa via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. ships out within 5 days edition of 50 Purchasable with gift card Buy Cassette $10 USD or more You own this Buy again Send as Gift

Digital Album Digital Album Streaming + Download Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Purchasable with gift card Buy Digital Album $10 USD or more You own this Send as Gift

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about

Lost for a time, an interval. Though no time lost. Besides, this familiarity is amorphous, this nostalgia unplaced. Where was I?



Iridescent forms float in & out of focus, while hazy harmonies see-saw like the rich patterns borne in a stream's glimmer, dismantled & remade perpetually. Subliminal architecture, really. Transportive.



But even in the purity of black & white, it undulates as if caught in a bygone breeze. Yesterday or last year?



Abstract & concrete, simulated paradoxes tend to saturate. A glass of water spills off of a table only to never hit the ground; a sea of static washes the pond's shore; a hummed lullaby pierces through an alabaster crystal; a tree grows from your head ripe with fruits of impossible shapes.



And, yet here you are.



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The third installment of Youngbloods' 2019 Spring Programme is the debut self-titled album from Brooklyn-based electroacoustic collaborative project Hilsa, guided by guitarist Kallie Lampel and cellist Skeleton Zoo (Steve Goodwin). Presented on limited edition cassette and across digital channels, Hilsa is a subtle cinematic narration that floats in and out of focus, see-sawing between hazy harmonies in a perpetual reconstruction of ambient, iridescent forms.



Through their solo projects, Lampel and Goodwin found a mutual affinity for peripheral melodies and ethereal soundscapes, and in 2016 the duo started developing a technique to sample and affect one another’s instrumentation as a framework for generative composition. By interweaving Lampel’s warm guitar work with Goodwin’s mini-orchestra of bells, music boxes, and cello, the two were able to delicately conjure a sense of amorphous familiarity and unplaced nostalgia, allowing rich patterns to be borne, dismantled, and remade.



While rooted in serendipitous pieces of improvisation, the recorded works of Hilsa offer the familiarity of motifs that only hint at a subliminal architecture. Balancing concrete and abstract structures while enfolding sparse contributions from the likes of Boston-based experimental musicians & vocalists Kira McSpice and Mercedes Aviles, each composition undulates as if caught in a bygone breeze.



Fully transportive, the Hilsa project is as resolutely illusory as the visual prints that accompany the cassette. Hard-carved into wood blocks by Goodwin, each black & white piece reflects the simulated paradoxes that saturate the album: a glass of water spills off of a table only to never hit the ground; shadows of fossilized fish swim in a sea of static; a hummed lullaby pierces through an alabaster crystal; a tree grows from a man’s head ripe with fruits of impossible geometric shapes—conclusively surreal.

credits

released April 19, 2019



All songs written and performed by Kallie Lampel and Skeleton Zoo (Steve Goodwin)

Kira McSpice appears on "saddestsongintheworld"

Mercedes Aviles appears on "Wash" and "Glass Something"

Songs 3, 5, 6, 10 recorded by Tyler Skoglund

Mixed by Kallie Lampel

Mastered by Steve Kitch at Audiomaster in London

Executive produced by Nicholas Concklin & John Moses

Artwork by Steve Goodwin

Design by Nicholas Concklin

Published by Mushpost LLC (ASCAP)

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