All proceeds from sales of this album and the individual tracks will go to The Arts for Illinois Relief Fund, which provides financial relief to workers and organizations in the creative industries impacted by COVID-19.
artsforillinois.org

Nov. 2020 Update - Since its launch in April 2020, the fund has awarded nearly $7 million in grants to 2,493 artists and 269 organizations across the state who have been impacted by COVID-related closures.

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A Resting Bell Sounds
Reader Advisor & Friends
March/April 2020

“A Resting Bell Sounds” is an inspiring album of wonderfully textural, ambient music. The “songs” run the gamut from pretty and soothing to droning and mechanistic. They feature a through-line of gorgeous bell tones: sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background, sometimes barely recognizable.

The idea and inspiration for the collaborative album came during the global coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. I had music I was working on for an art exhibit with Chicago-based artist, George Blaha. The opening of the exhibition was put on hold, as was pretty much everything scheduled at that time, Nonetheless, I wanted to move forward with these beautiful bell sounds, in particular to see how they would mix with other tones and textures, even rhythms.

The original track was created by recording the newly-purchased wind chimes on my back deck, nicknamed Athena, and the other ambient sounds behind my condo in Chicago, including the sound of wind through dead, brown leaves; traffic on Lawrence Avenue; and jumbo jets on their landing pattern to O’Hare Airport. This was then lightly processed to add a metallic sheen and a buzzing, mechanical drone.

The 25-minute track, while compelling in its own way (I have included a short excerpt here), was somewhat one-dimensional, so I decided to ask a group of musicians from the Facebook group I started, the Chicago Ambient Music Community, and a small handful of artists whose work I loved, to start with the track and go with it wherever they wished.

I love what they've done. I hope you do, too.

Inspired by Byron Metcalf, Steve Roach and Jon Hassell/Brian Eno — and my nearly two decades of work with the men’s personal development group, Victories (www.victoriesformen.org) — I’ve been fussing with the idea of mixing ambient/textural music with techno beats and/or shamanic rhythms. My first Reader Advisor & Friends album, Hard Adventures (readeradvisor.bandcamp.com/album/hard-adventures), was an initial attempt. My contribution to this collection, Soothing the Demon to Disappear, owes a great deal to the artists listed above, and is a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

All proceeds from sales of this album and the individual tracks will go to The Arts for Illinois Relief Fund, which provides financial relief to workers and organizations in the creative industries impacted by COVID-19.
artsforillinois.org


Cover art by Niles Frantz (Reader Advisor)
Mastering by Glenn Sogge


Please listen to/purchase music by my collaborators on this album:

Bleupulp (Max-eme Tanguu)
bleupulp.bandcamp.com

Cousin Silas
cousinsilas1.bandcamp.com

Dawn Tuesday
dawntuesday.bandcamp.com

Glenn Sogge
rkaicmoderne.bandcamp.com

Michael Nervous
michaelnervous.bandcamp.com

My Boyfriend The Pilot
www.myboyfriendthepilot.com

SRIGALA (Pete Swinton)
soundcloud.com/peteswinton

Phillip Wilkerson
phillipwilkerson.com

Soundpaper
bit.ly/2WWj878

David Gerard
ambientism.wixsite.com/davidgerard

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