“The source recording for the compositions featured on this album still exist on a single 90 minute cassette, made by the intermagnetics corporation from santa monica, california”, Asher Thal-Nir revealed on the occasion of the release of “Graceful Degradation: Variations”. “There are still some bits of Led Zeppelin here and there which remain among my recordings, but mostly the tape is full of recording I made. I remember working with this tape for several months over the summer and into fall of 2005, in my apartment in brooklyn; I would spend hours going through the material and trying to find different combinations of the recordings of the sounds which are stored on it.”

The outcome of these sessions was eventually released on Con-V, but the music never stopped playing in Asher’s head: “I went back and continued working”, he confesses “it is the material from this second period of work which has been used by the artists featured on this release.”

As to their own contribution, there was absolute freedom for the composers involved in the project, a feat mirrored by the stylistic differences between the tracks. For anyone with a deeper interest in the details of the album, the source material is still available for free download from the Sourdine website.

Homepage: Asher
Homepage: Sourdine