Tanner Menard - San Francisco: an Audiophony in Four Movements (2020)

Full Spectrum Records returns with a collection of new works from long-time label cohort tanner menard. san francisco: an audiophony in four movements serves as a sort of spiritual successor to their 2016 release, Deepest Indigo, and finds the artist returning to the hyperreal piano textures and dream-like haze that defined those earlier recordings.

Presented as a suite in four movements, san francisco was recorded between 2006 and 2009 as an extension of the conceptual “envelope” music – inspired by Ray Johnson’s work – that they were doing around the Bay Area during that time. The artist provided their friends Ping Chu and Chris Horgan with envelopes containing conceptual scores that indicated trajectories for recording locations around the San Francisco metro. These recorded found sounds and environmental performances were then mixed with sounds generated from a physically modeled 30-foot long piano, utilizing various experimental tunings by Nick Gish.

Ever the poet, tanner structured the album to roughly mirror Sonata Allegro form; hence the title, ‘an audiophony.’ Taking inspiration from Bernadette Mayer’s approach to the traditional sonnet, they sought to create a vast, experimental, recursive and barely recognizable sonic experience, achieving striking divergence from the source material through subtle changes in tuning and gradual movements from melodic signal to noise. The end result is a luxuriously dissociating album, with just a touch of romance lingering on its lips. We find ourselves in the sea, you & me...