Shelly Blake-Plock and musical director Joel Grip assembled aninternational cast featuring Parisian phenom Eve Risser, Stockholm-basedtrumpeter Niklas Barnö, reedman John Dierker, violinist Ryan Dorsey, drummersLyle Kissack and Ben McConnell, and Jessica Riefler, Carly Ptak, Twig Harper,Lawrence Lanahan as well as others in voice roles to record an album thatmerges radical 21st century experiments in free improvisationand concrete studio manipulation with traditional 19thcentury storytelling and character acting. It is produced by Shelly Blake-Plockand Matthew H. Welch.
An eclectic work comprised of styles ranging from free drones toschmaltzy quasi-jazz to improvised chamber pieces to noisy art rock, ‘TheViolencestring’ is based on a Victorian short story by Sabine Baring-Gould. Ittells the story of a young boy whose only desire lies in learning to play theviolin. Alas, when one’s parents are werewolves, music lessons just aren’t inthe cards.
Blake-Plock and Welch recorded the album in an abandoned mansion inWest Baltimore. Shelly’s lo-fi roots and unique take on sound editing comethrough especially strong on the project. He has called his process ‘reductivesound’, whereby a wall of instruments is recorded live – some through a smallarmy of microphones and some direct to the board. Decisions are then made inthe editing room to ‘chip away’ at the recording in an attempt to find themusic and sound most essential to drive the narrative forward. Rather thansmooth out the edits, Shelly leaves the edges hard and allows fields of soundand space to emerge and disappear in a very blunt and raw way. Residue andhidden scraps of sound therefore emerge as if from a palimpsest.
