Leisure Knots - Live At The Structure
Cassette
Live at the Structure is the debut release of Leisure Knots, a group spread across North Carolina and Virginia who have slowly been building a site-specific and texturally focused language together.
The album consists of five improvisations recorded during spring 2019, delivered through gatherings in yellowed millhouses, wooded ranches, and friends’ living rooms. The character of any specific performer is subdued in favor of a sort of environmental feeling-through which aims to reconstitute and then haunt its scenery. Incidental, environmental, and intentional sounds were allowed to freely mingle: prepared field recordings and saxophone swells mix with the diegetic whine of reel-to-reels, creaking of chairs and birdsong from the front yard. Familiar domestics mutate into melted corridors and foaming gardens, possessed by the recording process. These tracks vent the soft glow of their homes through an open window and into an unearthly outside.....
"Something we've all been feeling about this music is that it has a function of domestic re-enchantment for us, like, it defamiliarizes and haunts all the different spots we played in. We've joked about it being a "gothic record" in the way the music seems to possess and channel these architectural settings." - Ian Schlup
“Between not one but two unforgettable releases by not-of-this-world duo Ghost Food, Johnny Coley’s Antique Sadness, and now Live at the Structure, Irondale imprint/collective/movement Sweet Wreath has affirmed its role as a leading purveyor of haunting, home-spun creative music. Just the latest in a line of exciting debut recordings from central Alabama and beyond, this first full-length by Virginia-and North Carolina–based ensemble Leisure Knots is a thoroughly engrossing and evocative stretch of sublimity that both reflects the dark uncertainties of the present and gestures toward a brighter future. The quintet (joined by saxophonist Daniel Brooks on the B side) improvises at an easy yet purposeful pace, each member utilizing a rotating group arsenal of everything from found objects to computer processing to conjure individual but sympathetic strands of the most subdued cacophonies. Not all of the ambience that graces the tape’s five sections is conventionally warm or pretty, but that of the first certainly is, building the foundations for what lies ahead with wooden wands and cattail harps by an enchanted forest pond. “III” is probably the most active track, its nocturnal radio-scapes even getting a bit menacing at times, but then the beauty returns in the latter half of “IV” and the gorgeous closer “V,” helped along by Brooks’ brilliantly reserved contributions and some very well-placed field recordings. As usual, the liner notes say it better than I ever could: “These tracks vent the soft glow of their homes through an open window and into an unearthly outside.” Collaborative serendipity that makes the end feel like the beginning.“ - Noise Not Music
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Cassette
Live at the Structure is the debut release of Leisure Knots, a group spread across North Carolina and Virginia who have slowly been building a site-specific and texturally focused language together.
The album consists of five improvisations recorded during spring 2019, delivered through gatherings in yellowed millhouses, wooded ranches, and friends’ living rooms. The character of any specific performer is subdued in favor of a sort of environmental feeling-through which aims to reconstitute and then haunt its scenery. Incidental, environmental, and intentional sounds were allowed to freely mingle: prepared field recordings and saxophone swells mix with the diegetic whine of reel-to-reels, creaking of chairs and birdsong from the front yard. Familiar domestics mutate into melted corridors and foaming gardens, possessed by the recording process. These tracks vent the soft glow of their homes through an open window and into an unearthly outside.....
"Something we've all been feeling about this music is that it has a function of domestic re-enchantment for us, like, it defamiliarizes and haunts all the different spots we played in. We've joked about it being a "gothic record" in the way the music seems to possess and channel these architectural settings." - Ian Schlup
“Between not one but two unforgettable releases by not-of-this-world duo Ghost Food, Johnny Coley’s Antique Sadness, and now Live at the Structure, Irondale imprint/collective/movement Sweet Wreath has affirmed its role as a leading purveyor of haunting, home-spun creative music. Just the latest in a line of exciting debut recordings from central Alabama and beyond, this first full-length by Virginia-and North Carolina–based ensemble Leisure Knots is a thoroughly engrossing and evocative stretch of sublimity that both reflects the dark uncertainties of the present and gestures toward a brighter future. The quintet (joined by saxophonist Daniel Brooks on the B side) improvises at an easy yet purposeful pace, each member utilizing a rotating group arsenal of everything from found objects to computer processing to conjure individual but sympathetic strands of the most subdued cacophonies. Not all of the ambience that graces the tape’s five sections is conventionally warm or pretty, but that of the first certainly is, building the foundations for what lies ahead with wooden wands and cattail harps by an enchanted forest pond. “III” is probably the most active track, its nocturnal radio-scapes even getting a bit menacing at times, but then the beauty returns in the latter half of “IV” and the gorgeous closer “V,” helped along by Brooks’ brilliantly reserved contributions and some very well-placed field recordings. As usual, the liner notes say it better than I ever could: “These tracks vent the soft glow of their homes through an open window and into an unearthly outside.” Collaborative serendipity that makes the end feel like the beginning.“ - Noise Not Music
