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Sound Mechanic: Music From a Documentary Film About Neil Feather

by Neil Feather

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $8 USD  or more

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    140-gram pressing with color art. Limited to 250 copies worldwide.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Sound Mechanic: Music From a Documentary Film About Neil Feather via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    edition of 250 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $22 USD or more 

     

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    140-gram pressing with color art. Limited to 250 copies worldwide.

    Bundled with professionally reproduced DVD of Skizz Cyzyk's 2022 89-minute documentary about Neil, featuring footage of the performances included on the LP, interviews, and more. The DVD comes packaged in full-color art and features extended scenes and English-language captions. Trailer here: vimeo.com/520019005

    Includes unlimited streaming of Sound Mechanic: Music From a Documentary Film About Neil Feather via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days
    edition of 250 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $30 USD or more 

     

1.
Untitled 1 04:29
2.
Untitled 2 04:45
3.
Puppet - WONDOFEATHER 02:57
4.
Untitled 4 08:51
5.
Personal Space - Worm Eater 02:39
6.
Untitled 4 - Popular Organ Fun Party 05:55
7.
Train Song/Porch Song 03:23
8.
(dirty-clean) CLEANERS 05:18
9.
Vertical Curtain - Popular Organ Fun Party 02:46
10.
Untitled 5 01:15
11.
Flytape - Music Time 04:51

about

SOUND MECHANIC trailer here: vimeo.com/520019005

Neil Feather has spent decades creating a musical world of his own through dozens of one-of-a-kind instruments he invented and built himself. His work as an instrument inventor, improviser, musical iconoclast, and stalwart of the idiosyncratic Baltimore experimental scene culminated in the late 2010s when filmmaker Skizz Cyzyk shot hours of footage of Neil taking stock of his workshop and his collaborations with musicians from Baltimore and beyond as he prepared to relocate permanently to New Zealand. That period produced Sound Mechanic, Skizz’s 2022 feature-length documentary about Neil’s work and music. It also produced an LP-length collection of recordings of Feather’s music from the film that captures the spectrum of his unique sonic vision.

Uninterested in the traditional rules and roles of music from his early years, Neil began constructing noisemakers out of what was around him—pieces of metal, spare parts from bikes and other gadgets, discarded traditional instruments, various electronics, ball bearings, and so on. By the time he moved to Baltimore in 1985, his work had become more codified into a practice of instruments and families of instruments, such as the Nondo, the Vibrawheel, and the Former Guitars. At the same time, he became a mainstay of the burgeoning experimental/improvised music scene that erupted from the Red Room and the internationally renowned High Zero Festival.

Sound Mechanic the album serves as an ideal audio entry point into Neil’s music. Skizz, who recorded and co-produced, captured a variety of solo demonstrations and improvised performances with long-time collaborators including Kristin Toedtman, Rupert Wondolowski, and his now-spouse Rosie Langabeer. Tracks such as “Untitled 1” and “Untitled 3” find Neil performing solo on the Wiggler and the Vibrowheel, instruments whose agitated strings and spinning oscillators, respectively, mimic some of the timbres of more recognizable instruments but bend and distort them in alien ways. “Unititled 4,” one of two duo improvisations with Langabeer under the banner Popular Organ Fun Party, channels a Venusian jazz combo in its wild exclamations and percolating rhythms. “Personal Space,” from an impromptu trio with Zula Wildheart and Robert Beamer, puts Neil’s attack in the context of contemporary hardcore.

A special bundle offers a chance to capture both the music and the film in one package—as close as you’re going to get to the full Neil Feather experience outside of a live show.

credits

released April 19, 2024

Produced by Neil Feather and Skizz Cyzyk
Mastering by A.F. Jones at Laminal Audio
Design and layout by Chad Pelton

license

all rights reserved

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