COLIN ANDREW SHEFFIELD & JAMES ECK RIPPIE

full catalogue available objects Polarities by Colin Andrew Sheffield & James Eck Rippie Colin Andrew Sheffield is the founder of Elevator Bath and has recorded for the Invisible Birds, Mystery Sea, and Quiet World labels, while James Eck Rippie has recorded for the Crónica and Sirr labels, among others, and has collaborated with Simon Whetham, Paulo Raposo, and eRikm. They both currently live in Austin TX. They have made three albums together, starting with a first LP in 2001. It was followed by a fourteen year break before they resumed their collaboration with a pair of cassettes published on Elevator Bath. Sheffield and Rippie are both working with samples and records, creating their own brand of plunderphonics. There's always been a certain mystique to this kind of theft and plunder, despite the now commonplace idea of stealing other people's music to produce your own. In this particular case, you'd be hard-pressed to figure out the actual sources of their music and you have to believe their word when they claim to be using commercially available recordings. They focus on very small, almost microscopic fragments of music, and process them by all means available, using effects pedals, sampling effects, or modifying and damaging the records. The result is a textural reworking of the original sounds, layered and expanded into slowly unfolding atmospheric collages. Although almost untraceable, it retains for them the very essence of the original works, much like an alchemic distillation of it, transcending its previous shape to offer its substance and power in concentrate form. (label info)