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Abstract Vectoral Landscapes

by Steven Ball

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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Comes in a card sleeve with deep landscape images by Steven Ball

    Includes unlimited streaming of Abstract Vectoral Landscapes via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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1.
Suspension 06:54
The little plane on the video screen crawls slowly over the map of terrain, green line ahead, yellow behind, at varying scales, its length stretching halfway from Vienna to Bratislava, Berlin to Istanbul, and sometimes the entire width of the European mainland. I practice trying to be very small, and still, to sleep. At 3:30am London time, it gets light. The air temperature outside is minus 52 degrees celcius. Listening to the sound I recorded earlier on my phone. The sound of suspension, suspended in space, in the air, suspended in time, the low continuous rushing sound, and then the quiet sound of my neighbour’s snoring; the Airbus A380 is a small town of sleeping strangers at 37000ft above the ocean. Turbulence over India. Aches in my neck, lower back, buttocks, right thigh. I’ve found that if I sit still enough, eventually I’ll feel less uncomfortable, or fall asleep, whichever comes first. Comfort is relative. Time is relative. This ‘morning’ which is 7:35 London time, “apple or sandwich?” is 14:34 Singapore time, but what is local time at this point on the planet? How do I calculate that? If the ground is that zone below, on, and above the surface of the earth, determined by being inhabited by humans, sustaining human activity, how far above and below the surface does that zone extend? Is this airspace an extension of the ground? Woken for breakfast, 9am London time, 4pm Singapore time, two hours from Singapore… The gradual change in altitude on descent seems to impose an equalising filter on hearing, sounds become thin to the point where the bass has all but become inaudible, the middle frequencies also subside to leave tinny top end, pressure in the ear becomes physically palpable, almost painful. I swallow and ‘plop’, the bass returns. Soon after landing in Singapore 11am London time, 6pm local, it gets dark, six and a half hours drifting in and out of twilight.
2.
Polylingual 03:38
3.
scramble up from the track in the breath of the heat on the wind past the smoke of the fire scrubby grass and the river is dry butterflies, blackened tree plateau, savannah, falls, and floodplain pandanus spiralis stones underfoot, the walk to the ridge and there Myormu waiting for me sickness country and in rock escarpment in the deep past Miyamiya and the camera phone brow trickles waterfall sweat to the ground from the mountain below Google Earth, or a video drone as the ground is above captures fatal painting photograph the rainbow came through tail lights and explosions below and this sickness country all that you can see is what you’re told you can see [to see] peripheral night soon after twilight flashes of light when the sickness takes hold nausea, vomiting, appetite loss dehydration, confusion cells degraded by autophagy bone marrow syndrome cutaneous blisters ulcers sweat glands atrophy DNA clustered damage takes hold somewhere…
4.
Grounded 07:07
and in the water as in the sky out on the moor, the blasted moor the trees are moving we’re from the ground eroded hillsides the tracks run through the mountainside, denuded earth pine mixed with oak we’ve gone to ground sun in the desert moon on the dune fog from the woods rolls through the plain into the valley above the ground the icy tundra the permafrost the standing stones, the burial mound along the hedgerow we’re in the ground the ancient ruin the midden heap advancing shadows, in the clearing by the salt lake we’re on the ground abandoned bunker lost in the wood tumbling down into the mineshaft into the future we’ve gone to ground and in the water lost in the wood fog from the woods rolls through the plain into the future below the ground eroded hillsides moon on the dune tumbling down into the mineshaft into the valley above the ground sun in the desert the midden heap the mountainside, denuded earth by the salt lake we’re on the ground the ancient ruin the tracks run through advancing shadows, in the clearing the trees are moving along the ground abandoned bunker as in the sky out on the moor, the blasted moor pine mixed with oak we’re from the ground
5.
in the landscape dry and dusty something stirring after the fire mushroom weather passing through elusive enigmatic neither plant or animal the mushroom makes the forest the symbiopoietic self-organising system through mycorrhizal networks the mushroom makes the forest stripped back down to its binary code in assemblages of objects termites larvae and crow tree sand the snouts the limbs the branches brush the sky insect eye fruit pushing from soil berry lush trees fertile and loam the fauna in the flora simultaneous assemblage a pineapple animal with cauliflower foliage on the broccoli mountain the pandanus umbrella the fauna in the flora shadows cast dry river bed the glacial sky and tree mountain with fruiting bark, eyes in the sand trees with face and feathered branch the green fruit red blue rainbow riding through

about

Deep dreaming landscapes abstracted through song vectors. Animal, vegetable, and mineral. Above, on, and below the ground. In the past, present, and future. All at once in and out of place.

credits

released November 11, 2019

Written, performed, and recorded by Steven Ball, July 2019

originally released on TQN-aut (TQN-aut 7)
tqn-aut.bandcamp.com

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about

Steven Ball London, UK

Steven Ball has been working as an artist since the early 1980s, in film, video, sound, installation, and performance, and has been a member of the post-punk DIY group Storm Bugs. In 2014 he started writing and recording songs as a solo project, being particularly concerned with experimenting with which kinds of texts might constitute a song lyric. ... more

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