my work is a process of combining field recordings made on a dreary
Sunday morning in the poorest sections of inner city Wilmington,
Delaware--essentially these recordings were of empty spaces of wind
moving through tight graffiti covered alley ways and rows of
government housing located on the outer fringe of the city--the
recordings primarily consist of a sudden clatter of debris, strange
chiming noises but mostly a stretch of ghostly silences. I combined
these recordings with processed electric guitar and electric mbira.
everything was recorded live in the studio to create a series of
textural works--this process of creating a musical environment I
intended throughout to be a kind of reclaiming of what lay beneath the
taken-for-granted, indeed, "dirty" city underbelly. that is, I wanted
to bring out the beauty in all landscapes and natural phenomenon
(i.e., wind), however, disguised and dirtied they may be by government
neglect and public indifference to longstanding segregation....

[ Ben Fleury-Steiner ]



I've really enjoyed listening to Ben Steiner's compositions. They're wonderfully layered in depth and exhibit an exqusite density that comes across in a pristine way, one of which that really captivates my ears. Last summer I began talking with Ben about the possibility of collaborating and things began to fall into place really quickly, which was great. At the time we were also talking about the cities we live in and about the variety of sounds we come across as a result. To me these works represent the artistic culmination of treated sound extracts of the urban display. They exemplify a hybrid of the urban experince rendered through sound, built and broken, the dirty and the clean...

[ Christopher McFall ]

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