Andrew Tasselmyer - Where Substance Meets Emptiness (2024)

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.” - Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

Inspired by Murakami's ability to transform mundane moments into surreal, almost mystical plot lines, prolific Philadelphia musician Andrew Tasselmyer negotiates the space between what is-- and what could be. This is the heart and core of 'Where Substance Meets Emptiness'. Here, sounds creep to the edge and onto a blank canvas, warping them into otherworldly forms.

Simple drum patterns are blurred and sliced; synthesizers are time-stretched and filtered; field recordings and samples are crushed, destroyed, and made new into textures that couldn't exist in the real world. Combining these disparate elements and exploring their potential is what propels Tasselmyer into new experimental territories and workflows.

Whereas his earliest recordings were often diaristic efforts to "capture the moment" by centering unaltered field recordings taken during his travels, this album is an attempt to imagine the unseen and write new stories. For this project, Tasselmyer tasked his friends with collecting sounds unrecognizable in their context and without any personal attachments. Unseen settings and new stories emerge from the unfamiliar, and much like Kafka wandering into the dense forests of Kochi, eloquently described by Murakami in Kafka on the Shore, a deep sense of adventure and exploration are felt throughout the architecture of the album.

Using familiar tools (hardware samplers and software synthesizers) in new ways, placing heavy emphasis on rhythm and percussion, Tasselmyer works to propel the pieces forward into new territories beyond their typical ambient comfort zones. Here, ordinary methods and immediate results are ditched along with their traditional maps in order to reach uncharted places of the imagination.