NNN Cook & Wiggpaw - Simpatico Springs [Cassette + Digital]

$10.00

NNN Cook & Wiggpaw - Simpatico Springs [Cassette + Digital]

$10.00

From the minds of sound artist, poet, and designer NNN Cook and veteran sonic agitator turned field recordist Rick Wilson (aka Wiggpaw), H&S Ranch proudly presents ‘Simpatico Springs’—a collection of assembled field recordings, micro-percussion, texture studies and ultimately 'sound music.'

Grounded in silence and space, yet poised to awaken the human sensorium, 'Simpatico Springs' invites listeners to reacquaint with patience and commune with nature through abstracted realities, across an immersive aural palette. Referencing Marcel Duchamp’s concept of 'infra-thin' or the intertwined relationship, marked between two objects in passing—the recordings move listeners through a symbiotic sonic assemblage. Invoking painterly qualities, the care and craft of each track provides insight into this concept.

Equally informed by the words of poet Matsuo Kinsaku, Cook and Wilson provide solace in the expanse, as sounds ebb and flow in the ripples beneath, between and over the landscape.

'Sparrows in eaves,
mice in ceiling -
celestial music'
[Matsuo Kinsaku]

'When the tobacco smoke smells also of the mouth which exhales it, the two odors marry by infra-thin. Fire without smoke, the warmth of a seat which has just been left, two objects cast from the same mold, reflection from a mirror or glass, watered silk, iridescents, the people who go through (subway gates) at the very last moment, velvet trousers; their whistling sound is an infra thin separation signaled.'
[Marcel Duchamp]

Are sounds music? Is this art? Is the art the assemblage or is it the spirit(s) in nature itself. The recordings found on these beautifully shaped documents are equal parts curatorial and curious. A spectrum of sonic detritus, undulating both inward and outward. Meditative in its stream of consciousness, indifferent to wars, natural disasters, and the economy. The preciousness of a minute. Of two. Or three. In isolation with sound, we are alone, and forever beholden to the space between time and infinity. A churn of atoms. A brush against the expanse.
—Josh Levi

Mastered by Scott Gibbons, seminal and influential composer of Dark Ambient and micromusic, whose compositions demonstrate an acute balance between delicacy and physicality, often focusing around frequencies that are at the outermost limits of human hearing, and embracing quietness as a central element. A series of early releases on Sub Rosa by Gibbons were based solely on singular natural sound sources such as stones and air. Gibbons was an obvious choice to bring Cook and Wilson's composted sounds to germinate to otherworldly places.

NNN Cook - percussion, objects, textures, frame drum, piano, harmonium, electric organ, synthesizer, ocarina, tapes, mixing
Wiggpaw - field recordings, percussion, objects, textures

All recordings feature natural acoustics. No effects were used.

St. Louis, 2024

Mastered by Scott Gibbons
Recorded by Rick Wilson
Mixed and Produced by NNN Cook

Drawing and Text by Weaver
Photography and Design by Cook
Performance Photo by Chris Carl

100 copies of hi-fi ferro normal bias duplication, double sided color 5-panel j-card, sea green translucent with yellow pad print in clear/fluorescent green cases

First 25 tapes ship with nature fetishes collected by Rick and Nathan from rivers and forest in Missouri and Illinois