The final album released by the composer-performer Jerry Hunt before his death, Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams is a rare and foundational audio document of Hunt’s compositional process. The record collects five pieces from the artist’s “Ground” series, translating his characteristically variable and spatial scores into “recorded fixtures of activity using mechanic musical instrument arrays,” to eerie and mesmerizing results. Originally released by experimental label OODiscs in 1992, it is now available on vinyl for the first time from Blank Forms Editions. Its tracks are dense and unpredictable, a miscellany of arrhythmic bursts, fragments of spoken and whispered words, soft then fevered rattles and shaking, and a rare return to pianoforte for the virtuoso player. On “Talk (slice): double” a nervous, warped dialogue unfolds between Hunt and composer Rod Stasick, their voices alternately measured and monstrous. In “Transform (stream): monopole,” breathy whistles build against a shimmering stream of bells, rattles, and shakers in a fantastical cascade of percussion. Hunt revisits the piano in “Lattice (stream): ordinal” and “Bitom (stream): link,” oscillating between gentle, almost classical phrases and frantic, seemingly random play. His collaboration with violinist Jane Henry, “Chimanazzi (Olun): core,” extends similarly unorthodox playing techniques to the violin, involving the scraping, plucking, and playing of its strings. The unstable quality of these tracks belies the rigor of Hunt’s procedures; each of Ground’s five pieces, their “common ground core,” is derived from the angelic tables of sixteenth century English philosopher and occultist John Dee, adapted by Hunt as frameworks to layer, adapt, and renew in his compositions. With a complex arrangement of sensors and equipment, which the artist called “interrelated electronic, mechanic, and social sound-sight interactive transactional systems,” Hunt realized these derivative systems in the techno-shamanic performances for which he is best known. Ground distills these procedures into fixed songs, producing a vital and critical record of Hunt’s singular approach to composition.
Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams is released as part of Blank Forms’s extensive program dedicated to Jerry Hunt. This program includes the first institutional exhibition of the artist’s videos and sculptures, Jerry Hunt: Transmissions from the Pleroma, presented at Blank Forms from February 16th to June 11th, 2022; the publication of Partners, a memoir-cum-biography by the artist’s long-time romantic partner Stephen Housewright; the forthcoming anthology Blank Forms 08: Transmissions from the Pleroma; and Irida Records: Hybrid Musics from Texas and Beyond, 1979–1986, a deluxe LP boxed set and reader on Hunt’s briefly-lived independent label.
Blank Forms is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting emerging and underrepresented artists working in a range of
time-based and interdisciplinary art practices, including experimental music, performance, dance, and sound art. Blank Forms provides artists with curatorial support, residencies, commissions, and publications to help document, disseminate, and advance their practices....more
supported by 14 fans who also own “Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams”
Absolutely love this recording. I listen to it at work. I listen to it in the car on the way home from work. I listen to it while falling asleep. Curtis’ cello is so amazing. Just got the vinyl in the mail from Discogs the other day! Can’t wait to play on my hi-fi system! Dave Sewall
supported by 11 fans who also own “Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams”
An excellent collaboration yielding melancholic and unsettling looping noise with ethereal vocals, tinged with a bit of 80s horror synth. Highly recommend! cedarshims
Welcome Toronto's Music Gallery to Bandcamp, an archive of performances from the venue focused on innovation, experimentation, & expansion.. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 14, 2018
Violinist Johnny Gandelsman commissioned work from a wide variety of composers for this complex and diverse portrait of the U.S. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 5, 2022
supported by 11 fans who also own “Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams”
“With Julius, he was based in repetition, but here was a spirit of openness and improvisation. His scores, if they were written out that way, were often like jazz scores. He loved multiplying instruments – four pianos, ten cellos – so there was a real feeling of the presence of the instrument, not just using an instrument in some kind of equation, as a means to an end.” ~ Mary Jane Leach
Enough said. pt