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Crossing the Steppe

by Preston Swirnoff

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Includes cover art and pdf's of back cover essay by Preston Swirnoff and insert with album credits and track list.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 USD  or more

     

  • 12" vinyl 180g limited to 300 copies
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Vinyl includes digital album. This record was pressed at 180 grams and includes a sealed scented insert with album credits on archival absorbent paper. Custom scent design by Brian Goeltzenleuchter. Record ships within one week from purchase.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Crossing the Steppe via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.
2.
Bell Spire 03:10
3.
Pasos 02:13
4.
Onyx K 02:25
5.
Totem Course 03:29
6.
Cemento 02:02
7.
Lai Loom 02:26
8.

about

Crossing the Steppe is San Diego-based composer/musician Preston Swirnoff’s second solo album of electroacoustic music, following his solo debut Maariv (Last Visible Dog, 2008). It is the first release on Richard Isabella’s newly launched Set Spaces label, recorded and produced by Isabella in his warehouse studio over several sessions in 2019-2020. The record is pressed on 180g vinyl, including a back cover essay on the Great Steppe by Swirnoff and a custom-scented insert made specially for the record, created by scent artist Brian Goeltzenleuchter.

Swirnoff uses only acoustic instruments, with subtle tape manipulation and the natural reverb of the warehouse space, to create a haunting atmosphere inspired by the terrain of the Great Steppe, the vast ecoregion that connects Europe to Asia, a mysterious winding trail that blurs our traditional boundaries of ‘East/West’. Detuned guitars, percussion instruments, bells, air organ, kalimba, autoharp, double flutes, vocalizations with breath and whistling, and even the sounds of footsteps are used in a suite of intimate songs and interludes that evoke a fragile dreamlike state. It is the meditation of one faced with a momentous journey, whether internal or out on the open road. The closing title track is the culmination, the realizing of the journey, played on trumpet and hurdy-gurdy by Sean Francis Conway.

The music exists somewhere between musique concrete and rural folk traditions, transporting the listener to a sort of floating purgatory, a disorienting unmappable locale. Recommended for fans of Roberto Musci, Jean Claude Vannier, Alvin Curran, Igor Wakhévitch, Popol Vuh, This Heat, Gyorgy Ligeti, Harry Partch, or music from the Greek tragedy films of Pasolini.

credits

released February 5, 2020

composed and performed by Preston Swirnoff
hurdy gurdy & trumpet on title track by Sean Francis Conway
recorded and produced by Richard Isabella
mixed by Preston Swirnoff
mastered by Kelly Hibbert at Alachrome
cover design by Emily Hall
photography by Ed Mello
painting by Richard Isabella
scent design by Brian Goeltzenleuchter

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about

PRESTON SWIRNOFF San Diego, California

Preston Swirnoff is a San Diego-based composer, musician, and sound-artist working in a wide range of genres and projects over the past 25 years.

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