These recordings were made at the pewter casting studio where I have worked for seventeen years.
Recorded in 1999 and 2013
-C. Reider
An article was published in Disquiet about this album, titled The Sound of Melting Pewter.
disquiet.com/2013/11/29/the-sound-of-melting-pewter/
Few sounds become as routinized as those of one’s own workplace. The process of routinization breeds familiarity, which in turn lends these everyday sounds something akin to transparency. We learn to listen past them, to listen through them, even when they have an intensity that visitors might find distracting, or even annoying. For his new release Oído con plomo, the Colorado-based musician and sound artist C Reider has created a single track that is three quarters of an hour in length and that is comprised of recordings made at the pewter casting studio where he has been employed for 17 years. The sounds move back and forth between drone and rhythm, often situated in a space somewhere in between. Sometimes the sounds are especially peculiar, standing out from the tapping and whirring of machines. Around a fifth of the way through, for example, there are tonal elements like dolphin song, alternating with the fundamental activities of what suggest the manual manipulation of materials.
As antiquated as the idea of pewter casting may seem, the modern world invades on occasion, as when what appears to be the sound of telephone ringing appears. Much of Oído con plomo is the thick white noise of background activity. The source audio was recorded in 1999 and 2013. Reider’s piece brings to mind Vanessa Rosetto’s recording of the process of packing boxes of books, and Lauri Warsta’s fictional audio work “Dictaphone Parcel” of a box experiencing surveillance as it is packed and shipped.
released March 11, 2013