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An Hour Out of Desert Center

by Chas Smith

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about

An Hour Out of Desert Center is scored for pedal steel guitars, composer-designed-and-built crotales and sound sculptures, zithers, and a 1948 Bigsby lap guitar (a one-of-a-kind instrument that was owned by famed steel player Joaquin Murphey, who played with Spade Cooley, Tex Williams, Sons of the Pioneer, and other classic country artists). Here, Smith’s musical texture, evolving slowly and continuously over the course of the piece, is without dramatic flourishes. Like the spare landscapes around Desert Center, California, it simply exists in its muted beauty.

Absence of Redemption and Albuquerque 5402 are scored for the same instruments as the first work, but with the addition of Smith’s self-designed-and-built three-neck steel guitar, “guitarzilla,” which he prepares (a la John Cage’s prepared piano) with metal rods and plays with hammered dulcimer hammers. Absence develops in the linear fashion of the first piece. Albuquerque 5402 is a large-scale, two-movement piece constructed from dense, shifting textures that slowly taper away in the first movement and interweave in the next.

REVIEWS:

“If anyone needed proof that Smith’s music runs deeper than the novelty impact of gigantic, multi-rodded creatures struck and bowed with odd-shaped apparatuses, An Hour Out of Desert Center nails it…. Smith builds shimmering soundscapes. He stacks track after track of crystal-clear notes and motifs…. Its beauties are immediately palpable, yet they don’t fade with repeated listens…. Beautiful.” —Francois Couture, All-Music Guide

“Perhaps the most deeply impressive composer in the Cold Blue stable, Chas Smith is surely also one of the most original composers working anywhere today…. The latest [Smith CD] is also perhaps the most outstanding. It returns us to the extraordinary sound-world—fresh, understated, always ravishing—that he has made uniquely his own. The sonorities of this world are incandescent…. An Hour Out of Desert Center is a delicate play of lavish colors, a sonic equivalent of the awesome emanation from some mysterious natural light show that changes without articulation or human intervention. Radiant, soaring, dazzlingly lit by its own colliding harmonics…. Absence of Redemption had me thinking variously of bleak wind whistling through power lines, the clangorous hum of resonating steel, the scream of scraped metal echoing remorselessly through cavernous chambers…. Albuquerque 5402…is like a dense, shimmering celestial carillon…as gorgeous a euphony as one is ever likely to hear…. For anyone interested in the music of today—and of tomorrow—this disc is essential listening.” —International Record Review (UK)

“An Hour Out of Desert Center is a fascinating CD…. Close your eyes and let yourself be carried away, but watch out for rattlesnakes placidly passing by.” —All About Jazz (Italy)

“A heavenly steel guitar drone floating on a cushion of spacious silence…which has an enchanting, hypnotic aura…. Like walking through a valley or desert of drifting spirits or ghosts. Each note glows and is slowly stretched out so that one can watch each drone closely as it floats on by…shimmering in a mesmerizing haze…an exquisite and enchanting world of wonderful spirits. A very special spiritual offering.” —Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter

“A bold and complex feast for the ears…. Smith’s music easily straddles the timeless resonant eternity of spacemusic and the hands-on expressionism of the avant-garde…. Serene and sophisticated…An Hour Out of Desert Center is powerful and sublime, well in the area where terror and beauty meet.” —Star’s End website

“Another priceless disc by this poet of the Californian desert, another great disc from Cold Blue.” —Deep Listenings (Italy)

“We are almost always used to hearing a pedal steel guitar used in the same way, as accompanying country mostly. We could almost forget the instrument is also an instrument on its own, with its own sound ready to be rediscovered. Chas Smith gives it a new destiny…. This is great music, and recommended to those who want ambient music with a real musical content, and with a musical structural drive that has a natural inner movement which goes far beyond coincidence.” —Gerald Van Waes, Psyche Van Het Folk (Belgium)

credits

released March 11, 2003

Chas Smith: pedal steel guitar, Bigsby lap guitar, crotales, zither, Pez Eater, cutters, Guitarzilla

All selections composed, performed, engineered, and produced by Chas Smith, 2001-03, at TDS Studio, Encino, CA.
Mastered by Kevin Gray, AcousTech Mastering, Camarillo, CA
Producer/Ninja: Laura Steele
Photography: Lauira Steele
Design: ford@twerp.com

All compositions © 2003 Chas Smith, Palindrome Publishing Co. (BMI)
CD p & © 2003 Cold Blue Music, Venice, CA
www.coldbluemusic.com

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Chas Smith California

Chas Smith is a composer-performer-instrument builder who has created a unique musical world—complete with its own instruments. It’s a world of expansive ever-evolving musical tapestries and sculpted textures that display his fascination with both the scientific and the sensual. “With Smith’s music, the sounds are as compelling as his concepts and instruments.” (The Wire) ... more

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