Hidden Treasure and Shamanistic Musing from a Los Angeles Underground Polymath
BLQLYTE is the debut LP by Zeroh on Leaving Records. From its opening whisper of “culture is a baby” followed by a euphoric but frightening blast of sound, BLQLYTE moves with the unpredictable energy of a psychedelic trip, where apocalyptic soundscapes and mutated R&B vault between shamanistic musings on mortality and earthly matters of modern day Los Angeles. The mood is heavy, hanging in the air like rising waters building to a catastrophic flood. Zeroh’s ninja like voice seamlessly transforms throughout tracks like a Greek chorus, tackling speeding thoughts and introspections in a stream of consciousness cascade of vocal flows and techniques that are both wordy and soulful. Perhaps classifiable as a rap album, BLQLYTE inhabits its own experimental, deeply personal zone in the orbit of Leaving Records’ genre free ethos.
Composed, Produced, Mixed by Zeroh
Mastered by Jonwayne
Art by AshTreJinkins & Zeroh
BLQLYTE features Low Leaf + FR/BLK/PR + Jeremiah Jae
BG Vox: Sharada Shashidhar
Keys: Jamael Dean
Drums/Perc: Mekala Session
Flute: Aaron Shaw
Bass: Lawrence Shaw
Violin: Jon GK
**Celia Hollander live at Zebulon in Los Angeles**
opening for Fennesz March 7th, + a weekly residency March 9, March 16, March 23, and March 30.
Celia Hollander works with digital audio as a medium to intuitively form temporal experiences. Each song in Recent Futures aspires towards a different type of temporal movement: a swing between the recent past and near future, an accelerating present, a temporal eddy, a juxtaposition between massive and microscopic durations, a flowing momentum and a preserved stillness. An assemblage of field recordings drenched, sampled, tumbled, stretched, diced, dyed, layered and reversed, Recent Futures yields varying terrains of the abstracted mundane, a magical realism of audio.
Celia Hollander is an LA based composer and artist working with audio, scores, performance, installation and text. Her work critically engages ways that audio and the act of listening can shape temporal perception, generate narratives, question cultural infrastructures and cultivate social connection. Her work has been performed or installed in venues and institutions including MOCA, The Getty, Kunsthalle Basel, Cirrus Gallery LA, Human Resources LA and Zebulon, LA and she is a resident dj on Dublab Radio.
composed and produced by Celia Hollander
piano by Alex Tyson on Vacant & Encouraging My Trophy Houseplant
art and design from Hilary Dupont and Rosa McElheny
script drawn by Celia Hollander
photography and video from Alex Tyson
mastered by Matthew David McQueen
Peace Bells is a glimpse into the multi-layered world of artist and musician Elliot Bergman. The cassette, reissued by Leaving Records, was recorded over a weekend at the Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles, in the booth of Shane Campbell Gallery. Over the course of several days, Bergman gave durational performances utilizing his collection of self-made instruments, which he looped and layered into the music you have on this tape. For the past 15 years, Bergman has been building amplified variations on the African Mbira, which he refers to as Metal Tongues. He has also been making Peace Bells, from melted guns and bullet casings. Using this rich collection of instruments as source material, he builds looping and layered soundscapes that evoke comparisons to Moondog, Reich, Bertoia, Eno and Konono No. 1. These rhythmic and otherworldly textures range from minimal and meditative to driving and danceable.
Elliot Bergman is a musician and visual artist that lives in Los Angeles. After studying Jazz, Composition, and Gamelan music at the University of Michigan, he has been an active part of the creative music scenes in Brooklyn and Chicago while touring extensively with groups including Wild Belle, NOMO, Iron and Wine, His Name is Alive, Beck, and Tom Tom Club.
His musical and visual art practices are uniquely intertwined. Bergman often builds the instruments that form the basis for many of the compositions in Wild Belle and NOMO: variations on the African Mbira that are electrified and amplified. His interest in metal work led him to take bronze casting classes at a Chicago area community college, and he has been producing bronze sound vessels and sound sculptures since 2012. He has exhibited his visual work at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago, where he had a solo show in 2017 called Praxis, and at the Hirshhorn Museum as a part of their Sound Scene show in summer of 2017. In 2019 Bergman had installations and performances at the Marciano Foundation in Los Angeles and Depaul Art Museum in Chicago.
He is currently preparing for an upcoming show at Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, opening April 3rd 2020.
