An array of commonplace metal objects - chains, pans, a bicycle, a chair - recorded by Ross Alexander at home in Berlin during the pandemic comprise the source material of 11 𝑮𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒔. Functioning as a temporal and mnemonic exploration into the nature and conception of “home”, the album evokes Alexander’s earliest memories and broader hauntological perspectives of post-industrial England:

“Growing up in South Yorkshire in the 1980s and 90s was an existence haunted with the ghosts of a heavy manufacturing industry which once thrived in the region. On both a visceral and sensorial level it might be considered equally as impossible to escape the nostalgic stories of mines and steelworks as it was to escape the smell of molten metal in the air drifting from the Don Valley.”

The improvised metallic scrapes, bangs, and bowings recorded by Alexander were further abstracted in live performances using granular sampling techniques, creating a new and extrinsic world to which subconscious thoughts can flee, sonically and contextually. The results are both dreamy and unpredictable, fusing the immediacy of acoustic percussion with the billowing resonances imbued by granular synthesis.

“On tracing back through distant memories of my formative years for sound-objects which represented to me the essential idea of ‘being from’ as opposed to ‘being a visitor’ I related to a pervasive association with the sounds of metal and metallic objects, mostly in respect to how certain structural properties relate to haptic and resonant nature and the manifestation of those properties as sonic results. I feel this is the result of growing up in a place where heavy industry, or at least the remnant of which, was central to society, community and everyday life.”

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Ross Alexander is an artist, producer and curator based in Berlin working in the context of expansive trans-disciplinary practice and non-individualist ideals. His broad ranging body of work as an artist has encompassed music, performance, sound art, visual arts, installation, radio art, digital media, augmented reality, intervention, social practice and education. Ross has presented and performed at such institutions as ICA London, Transmediale Festival, Nyege Nyege Festival, Documenta Kassel and Martin-Gropius Bau Berlin.

As a curator and organizer his experimental and diverse practice has seen him work with Transmediale festival, Maerzmusik, Glastonbury Festival, Cashmere Radio, Nyege Nyege Festival Uganda and extensively with his own Salon Oblique production collective.

rossalexanderpayne.com
instagram.com/o0rossalexander0o
rossalexanderworks.bandcamp.com
mixcloud.com/rossalexandermix

THIS IS CATALOG NUMBER ENMD-04