GD018 Annual Summer Concerts – Tamio Shiraishi & Sean Meehan

To order go to: Pogus Productions

Two of Tamio & Sean’s annual summer concerts in New York City recorded in binaural pedestrian splendor by Geoff Dugan, Tamio (sax), Sean (percussion) and the city. Binaural recordings are optimal for headphone listening but I recommend listening via stereo speakers in a room, on a summer day with the window open and the volume turned up. Playing records is a recreational activity.

A handmade multiple edition of 500; 12”, 180-gram vinyl in a screenprinted kraftboard jacket.

Illustration by Nicholas Blechman and printing by VG Kids.
Mastered by James Fei.
Co-produced with Old Gold Records.
Released in 2006.

Garage Side:
Municipal Parking Garage at the 79th Street Boat Basin, July 20, 2002

Bridge Side:
Under the Manahattan Bridge at Pike St. and Monroe St., July 20 2003

Review: Vital Weekly, No. 554 Week 48
“The music is all improvised, but it deals with some interesting points. First of all, in what way do the locations matter? Do the musicians listen to what the other is doing and in what way do the sounds from the environment interact with their playing? Do they respond? I think they do. When the subway passes, the music increases. That’s one aspect. The other one is that field recordings are used here in a very subtle way. The environment becomes an extra instrument, and perhaps Dugan as an extra player. On the bridge side, Shiraishi’s saxophone sounds like tires of a car and Meehan’s snare drum produces some interesting scratching, making both to sound as something else. The environment is of course used a lot inside the world of field recordings but never (or at least not as much) as it is done here. The music gets incorporated in the environment and the recording is simply breathtaking. This is a great work, one of the few of improvised music that has something new to say.”
—Frans de Waard