Entering the studio with Randall Dunn with no written material, Turner set out to capture improvised pieces devoid of any premeditation, adornment, or alterations. The seven songs on the album vary in terms of timbre, volatility, and volume despite being rooted in the same principle of pure expressionism. On his first official full length, To Speak, Turner dives even deeper into subconscious playing and the deeper possibilities of electric guitar. His most unbridled improvisation pieces, however, have been solo guitar works issued under his own name. Over the last ten years, Aaron Turner has increasingly focused on improvisation, and this refined emphasis on free composition has been applied to his work within the bands SUMAC and Old Man Gloom. ![]() Black Edition produced by Peter Kolovos Mastered by Elysian Masters Black edition design by Rob Carmichael, SEEN Studio Executive Services: Bruce Russell Technical Services: Peter King, Thomas Sims, John Button. Recorded at Thistle Hall, Wellington, AOTEAROA, 1994-5. Surface of the Earth were: Tony McGurk, Donald Smith, Paul Toohey. Restored and remastered from the original tapes presented in a deluxe tip-on gatefold with black pigment ink foil stamping on pure black tactile Reef paper. Thin Wrist present Surface of the Earth for the first time ever in its complete form. Over its nine pieces and nearly 80-minute duration it courses with an undeniably organic, human energy it develops and sustains with a sort of terrifying beauty that evokes elation and dread, a tension and ease that transports the listener to another sort of dimension. For all of that - the album sounds like a field recording from another world: dark tones reverberate, metals echo and clatter and electricity crackles, blooms of feedback emerge held in suspension - half floating, half driving through a dense nocturnal atmosphere. It was recorded live between 19 with two microphones to cassette in a cavernous wooden community hall in the city center of Wellington, NZ the music created with a shambolic collection of cheap, hardly functioning electric guitars, ancient NZ made valve amps and a scant few effects, reverb, walkie talkies, Dictaphones, and a synthesizer with its keys taped down. Later it was made available as a double lathe-cut LP in an edition of 20 before eventually being released on CD by Bruce Russell's legendary Corpus Hermeticum label alongside works by A Handful of Dust, Flying Saucer Attack, Thurston Moore, and The Shadow Ring. ![]() The album began as a limited edition, self-released cassette in 1995. It is a rare album where players, instruments, and space coexist and play equal parts - coalescing to create a new, monumental kind of music - one that is both haunting and embracing, dark and transcendent. ![]() It has been called " one of the most important albums to ever drag the subterranean vibe of unending drone into the stifling, weirdly beautiful vista of urban decay", and has drawn parallels with the works of Phill Niblock, William Basinski, and Éliane Radigue, as well as Tony Conrad and John Cale. Liberated from tonal and structural convention, yet also embracing elements of drone and ambient music, the Wellington trio created an album that defied easy categorization. Since its release in 1995, Surface of the Earth's self-titled first album has gradually been recognized as an unlikely minimalist masterpiece and one of the key albums to emerge from New Zealand's 1990's Free Noise movement.
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