Vessel by Scot Ray
Scot Ray - lap steel slide guitar, looping, fx
Solo lap steel in The Tank, Center For Sonic Arts, Rangely, CO.
What can I say about The Tank? Since I was a kid playing trombone I have been intrigued by how the architecture of a space interacted with the sound I was producing, sometimes reflecting it back in soft folds off of the surfaces - endless hallways, gymnasiums, theatres, tiled bathrooms - as if to inject a small dose of helium into the notes and make them expand. In that way, The Tank was a big dose of 'helium', and that catalytic element became my sonic partner. And, as in any improvisation with another player, I tried to listen and experiment to see what excited the conversation, what I needed to omit, how much space could be sustained, what the pace and patterns of response were, how harmonies were received as opposed to linear lines, etc. Through that process these 'solo' guitar pieces became a kind of dialogue 'in duo' with the cylindrical architecture of the tank, how I could converse with it's reverberant responses, how it's 'helium' altered the normal order of events - attack, sustain, decay, and so forth. In this way we, The Tank and I, became springboards for each other's timbral vocabularies.
Live and improvisational with no overdubs.
Recorded by Samantha Wade.
Mastered by Wayne Peet, Newzone Studio.
Cover photo by Hayley Nolte.
Video of the recording of track 5 'Vaulted':
https://youtu.be/bjuR8VDNQaI
Tracklist
| 1. | Oppdrift | 5:29 |
| 2. | Antimony | 7:35 |
| 3. | Rangely | 6:34 |
| 4. | Orbiculate | 8:26 |
| 5. | Vaulted | 5:48 |
| 6. | Quadratura | 8:43 |
| 7. | Corazon | 8:53 |
