there must be a way across this river
/the abject

Video recorded live at SONIC, Lyon (excerpt)

2011
John Duncan, Michael Esposito, Z'EV
LP released by Fragment Factory.
FRAG20

Duncan's partial text from the inner sleeve notes:

"Michael Esposito proposed the trip to the house where I lived in Chicago, researched and contacted the present owner to get permission to make recordings inside. He spoke by phone with the wife. When we visited the house, the husband told us the wife was away and refused to allow us to enter. Michael made a recording of this encounter, which is where the EVP was found. Would EVP have been recorded if I hadn't been there? […] Credit should also be given to Heidi Harman, the medium who was with us that night who gave the unsettling news that she could hear my name specified by the voice".

Two long, remarkable pieces, documenting the occurences at John Duncan's childhood home on February 20, 2009, recorded by Michael Esposito and later processed by Duncan and Z'EV.

Edition of 461 copies, pressed on black 140g vinyl, incl. double-sided insert.

There Must Be A Way Across This River was a performance / installation that Duncan presented inside a refrigerated basement at a performance hall in Bologna, where he presented a slow-developing soundtrack of arctic drones layered with darkly vibrating shortwave patterns, whispered declarations from Duncan himself, and these strange violent bursts of electronic noise. The sounds of There Must Be A Way Across This River are relatively subtle for Duncan's catalogue of work, but they are darkly evocative, eerie, bleak, and ominously threatening. Another very strong piece in his ever impressive body of work. The flip side of the record is a strange collaboration between Duncan, Z'EV, and the EVP hunter Michael Esposito. Originally, Esposito, Duncan, and the medium Heidi Harman set out to make recordings in Duncan's childhood home outside of Chicago. Despite making arrangements with one of the occupants at the house, they were refused access, all the while Esposito was recording their conversations. During those recordings, 18 EVP invocations occurred, one of which addresses Duncan by name - an allegation that Harman confirmed through her own psychic contact. These 18 invocations were then given over to Z'EV who manipulated them into a suitably frightening set of interwoven drones and spectral undulations. If that particular EVP citation of Duncan's name is on these recordings, Z'EV has thoroughly eradicated the syntax into a slippery, ectoplasmic sound. It's one of the best things we've heard from Z'EV outside his kinetic percussive assaults, and rounds out a terrifyingly great piece of wax!
-- Aquarius Records

More reviews