Anthony Guerra & Joel Stern - Stitch (Impermanent Recordings, 2004)

1 Untitled 7:56
2 Untitled 7:02
3 Untitled 0:52
4 Untitled 7:33
5 Untitled 2:54
6 Untitled 9:27
7 Untitled 0:53
8 Untitled 4:43
9 Untitled 18:20

Stitch is a recording of bold fully detailed layers of sound produced from field recordings and guitar, though there are few times where the source of the audio can be clearly heard or understood. These improvisations are both dense and heavy while maintaining a fragile sense of weightlessness or even swinging equilibrium.

Joel Stern & Anthony Guerra met in London in 2000 and started performing and recording regularly as an improvising duo. Their first works focussed mainly on densely textural drones produced by the meshing of layered electric guitar tones with processed environmental field recordings. Although the basic working materials have remained relatively unchanged, recent Stern/Guerra recordings and performances have shown an increasing attention towards minute gestural detail framed within sparsely arranged, slow moving passages of abstract continuity. Stern & Guerra have previously released sound on the label twothousandand and have a track on the Touch compilation "Ringtones."
Impermanent Recordings

Guerras luminous drones loop through much of the music, refracted at times into recurrent sub-Frippertronics. Stern wafts clouds of interference into this radiant atmosphere, agitated particles of noise and found sound that either hang around like dust or cling together in a continuum that inverts the guitars serenity.
The Wire

I could easily see myself disappearing in the smoky trails of these glacial avant-garde improvisations for hours, and when the performers involved approach the genre with this sort of inventiveness and excitement, I'll be happy just sitting where I am right now, staring at nothing and everything at the same time.
The Broken Face

seems to be sold out visit Joel Stern (here or here) & Impermanent Recordings
try

Joel Stern - Unplugged / Jodphur (TwoThousandAnd, 2002)

1 Untitled 3:20
2 Untitled 0:53
3 Untitled 6:20
4 Untitled 3:01
5 Untitled 3:35
6 Untitled 2:55
7 Untitled 1:55
8 Untitled 3:11
9 Untitled 5:27

Listening to unplugged/jodphur is like exploring a derelict building. Inside one room you can hear water running. You find a light switch and press it-sparks burst from nowhere as the ignition of distant machinery begins to hum all around. The walls are peeling. Behind some broken tiles there's a tin box holding old coins and photographs.
Stern treats these artifacts to reveal a place of submerged activity, an ambiguous space filled with static objects bearing the faint trace of human gesture. Documentation and manipulation interact and overlap in an environment that's charged with an awareness seldom heard by our ears.
TwoThousandAnd

Australian artist Joel Stern's Unplugged/Jodphur (sic) is an enticing collage in nine parts that blurs the line between taped "natural" sounds and electronic processing. From the onset, it's richly cinematic, with a buffeting wind sharing space with muffled metallic clangs and static interruptions. The music ebbs and rises throughout the disc with great attention paid to sonic detail and the combination of pillowy and harsh sounds. One will sometimes hear, for example, amorphous throbs paired with splintering slivers of high-pitched tones forming a delightfully ambivalent and complex texture. Stern also periodically returns to more purely concrete territories which, for the listener, is something like waking from a dream; one suddenly is aware of ambient sounds like birds and faraway voices and the effect is startling. The listener is pulled back and forth between these poles, sometimes gently, other times with a certain amount of force, even harshness. All told, this makes for a bracing, never less than fascinating journey and stands Unplugged/Jodphur alongside the work of artists like Lionel Marchetti, which is strong company indeed. Recommended, especially for those interested in the ongoing history and evolution of musique concrete.
All Music Guide

sold out visit Joel Stern & TwoThousandAnd

try