555 SOUNDS - 'Live from Dirtmall'

Released as CS in September 2021 by Ingrown Records
Shot + Edited in San Francisco and Columbia, CA 2020-2021

Synopsis:

The latest and most liquid offering by San Francisco-based experimentalist Chris Farstad aka 555 Sounds, Live From Dirtmall, takes its name from the venue it was created for: a virtual gallery set within an abandoned shopping mall. Inspired by ideas of juxtaposition, uncertainty, and the global commerce of detritus, the music follows an appropriately miasmic logic, oozing and percolating in surreal arrhythmias of electronic mirage. Mutating loops of Korg, Yamaha, and environmental texture crosshatch and refract through digital delay, equal parts playful and post-human, a spiritualized fantasia as imagined by artificial intelligence.

In tandem with the audio Live From Dirtmall contains a visual counterpart, crafted using an array of psychedelic techniques, from oil and water dyes to stained glass, video synthesizers, crystal fragments, microscopes, plastic beads, FX software, and isopropyl alcohol. Rainbow waves of video feedback radiate and pixelate, strobing in time with abstract silhouettes among brief glimpses of circuitry, salt shakers, birds. Farstad cites the “G-rated surrealism” and subliminal messaging of Soviet animation from the 70's as a touchstone, guided by a veiled psychological arc rather than concrete narrative. Taken as a whole, the video serves as a transfixing, encrypted companion to the album, a compound eye rapture rippling with color, confusion, and complexity: “Matter into spirit, analog into digital, reassessing the value of each, forming a composite.”

Text by Britt Brown

AUDIO
KORG MicroSampler, Ableton, Catalinbread CSIDMAN, SP-404, Yamaha WT-11, Yamaha WX-11

VIDEO

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Holy schnikes this is incredible! More please.