zonalsounds:

A live recording of A Winged Victory For the Sullen with the ACME string ensemble, the new collaboration between composer Dustin O’Halloran and Stars of the Lid member Adam Wiltzie at the Carnegie Museum of Art’s sonically dynamic Hall of Sculpture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 2nd 2011.

You can view photos taken at the performance at experimedia.tumblr.com.

Thank you to the presenters of this event who were kind enough to allow us private access to the balcony in order to capture the performance, room acoustics, and dynamics at a high quality with very little audience noise. Thank you to Kranky Records who kindly invited us to attend the performance. Thank you to Dustin, Adam, The ACME string ensemble, Benoit Pioulard, and Ken Camden for the beautiful performances of the evening. Thank you to Adam, Dustin, and Kranky for permission to stream this recording for a limited time.
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A Winged Victory For the Sullen’s self titled album out now on Kranky Records in North America and Erased Tapes in Europe is available on CD and LP from Experimedia.net and other fine independent record shops worldwide.

A Winged Victory For the Sullen will tour Europe in January 2012. Visit awvfts.com for details.
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“A Winged Victory for the Sullen is the first installment of the new collaboration between Stars of the Lid member Adam Wiltzie and composer Dustin O’Halloran. The duo agreed to leave their normal home studio comfort zone and develop the recordings with the help of large acoustic spaces, and to hunt down a selection of 9ft grand pianos that had the ability to deliver extreme sonic low end. Other traditional instrumentation was used including string quartet, French horn, and bassoon, but always juxtaposed is the sound of drifting guitar washed melodies.

The recordings began in one late night session in the famed Grunewald Church in West Berlin on a 1950s imperial Boesendorfer piano and strings were added in the historic East Berlin DDR radio studios along the River Spree. One last final session in a private studio deep in the northern cusp of Italy on a handmade Fazioli piano, and the final mixes took place in a 17th century villa near Ferrara, Italy, with the assistance of Francesco Donadello. All songs were processed completely analogue straight to magnetic tape.

Their secret to harvesting new melodic structures from the thin air of existence was for the duo to push themselves to live dangerously, realizing that clear thinking at the wrong moment could stifle the compositions. The final result is seven landscapes of harmonic replicating ingemination. In ‘Requiem for the Static King Part 1’ (created in memory of the untimely passing of Mark Linkous) they have taken the age old idea of a string quartet and then shot it out a cannon to reveal exquisite new levels of mellow bliss. Of the 13 minute track ‘Symphony Pathetique,’ Wiltzie says ‘after almost 20 years of struggling to create interesting ambient drone music, I feel like I have finally figured out what I am doing.’

Notable guest musicians include Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, and violinist Peter Broderick. A Winged Victory for the Sullen is not a side project. This is the future of the late night record you have always dreamed of.”
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