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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
12" LP version of Potential Landscapes. Each sleeve is unique and includes a hand-painted rainbow over the Icelandic mountain range. Item is in production and is estimated to ship in June.
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edition of 250
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Perfect for your car or walkman. Edition of 50 discs to fulfill your 1990's cosplay needs.
Includes unlimited streaming of Potential Landscapes
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Tristan Kasten-Krause makes music to envision other worlds on his debut solo record, Potential Landscapes. A New York-based composer and bassist, Kasten-Krause has been tapped by iconic composers Steve Reich and Alvin Lucier and has played in Oklahoma! on Broadway in addition to actively participating in the local DIY and experimental scenes. On Potential Landscapes, he blurs reality and perception, making music that feels real but is, in actuality, impossible. Potential Landscapes channels the potential energy of escapism into four sweeping, contemplative tracks made of undulating possibility.
Kasten-Krause has gigged in New York’s contemporary music scene for many years, but over time, he’s grown wary of collaborative music-making that feels transactional and centers on one artist. Potential Landscapes is antithetical to the idea of the auteur, instead centering the joy of creating sound with other people. Kasten-Krause has united a group of some of his closest friends to work with him on this record: Cloud Nothings drummer Jason Gerycz, experimental vocalist Lisel (Eliza Bagg), Tigue percussionist Matt Evans, electric guitarist and composer Brendon Randall-Myers, and violinist and cheesemonger Carol Johnson, with album art made by his brother, Jordan Kasten-Krause. Rather than dictate the music they contributed to the album, Kasten-Krause embraced a true spirit of collaboration, allowing each musician to bring their individual musical practices to the album. The result is remarkably cohesive, swimming through each unique influence with cinematic grace.
Potential Landscapes was recorded non sequentially between 2018 and 2020, structured around meetups with collaborators who were scattered across the country. The sound they create is deceptively serene, made of tranquil hymns and long meditations, but underneath the surface ripples layers of different musical instruments and deep-felt emotions. To write this music, Kasten-Krause turned to Éliane Radigue’s colorful drone music that blooms from a deep sense of intuition, Jon Gibson’s groundbreaking minimalist clarinet playing, Phil Niblock’s minimalist compositions that remove breath and bow changes to create unending sound clusters, and Alvin Lucier’s explorations of resonance and space. He formed each piece on the album by uniting the fragments of music his collaborators sent him, shifting pitches and removing breath and bow strokes, then mapping each note onto its own channel, using automation to digitally create sounds. This process was one he began when working with LEYA harpist Marilu Donovan on their duo record, Nowhere. But that album was made of music that was adrift without a home, the kind of otherworldly music that was meant to launch you into outer space; Potential Landscapes is music that has a place, even if that place is only imaginative.
The music of Potential Landscapes follows an emotional arch: It begins with the dawn of a new day ("Dawn Looming") and all its possibilities, jumps to the intense feelings of ecstasy and sorrow ("Euphoria Cancel" / “From Thin Air”), and finishes with a simultaneous strength and fear ("Contra"). The album’s cover features the imagery of a black and white Icelandic mountain and hand-drawn rainbow, evoking a sense that there’s a hidden realm that exists beyond the horizon. Potential Landscapes reminds us that we have the ability to go there. Its infinite music transports us to heightened mental realities, and there’s an endless potential energy bubbling up from its glimmering sounds. Each contains a spectrum of emotion just waiting to be cracked open—all we have to do is choose which one.
credits
released April 23, 2021
Matt Evans - Keyboard
Brendon Randall-Myers - Guitar
Carol N Johnson - Violin
Jayson Gerycz - Percussion
Lisel (Eliza Bagg) - Voice
Tristan Kasten-Krause - Double Bass
Recorded between 2018-2020 in Brooklyn NY, Cleveland OH and Los Angeles CA.
Mixed by Tristan Kasten-Krause
Mastered by Jack Callahan
Executive Production by David Roush
Design by Jordan Kasten-Krause
Photography by Chris Cubellis
supported by 41 fans who also own “Potential Landscapes”
I really love this album. The way the melodic/harmonic motifs seem to have these slight variations and overlap in different ways is constantly fascinating. Also the drum rhythms are just so cool. Also the sort of “found sound” stuff, like the typing and writing sounds, adds really nice texture. Nick Joliat
supported by 28 fans who also own “Potential Landscapes”
What can we give each other
In the brief moments
While lives touch?
If you help me see
If I open your ears
Will I learn to discern
Infinitesimal shades
Of white and blue
In the frozen sky?
As the world labours
To hold on to her gifts,
Will you hear
The music of the stars
In her patient sighs?
On our singular loops
From the void and back
We are each a moving space
Defined by chances
Of what in the world and who
Touches us. nmcr01
As the title implies, the latest from Lebanese artist Yara Asmar combines ambient synths with treated accordion in dreamlike songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 31, 2023
Texas oceanographer Daniel C. O. Thornton weaves field recordings into his shimmering ambient tracks to create absorbing sound collages. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 3, 2022
supported by 20 fans who also own “Potential Landscapes”
Honest & uninhibited, Ben's guitar and voice move effortlessly and unreservedly from sweet to insistent to ecstatic. No posturing, no pretense. His heart is wide-open here -- as in youth. jobo3208