M. SAGE SHOP

Lieven Martens (Dolphins into the Future) and Matthew Sage (M. Sage, Fuubutsushi) come together on this cassette to tamper with Western tropes. Released in a beautiful edition with risograph jcard by  Martens’ own Edições CN, known for distributing sound works that function loosely as travelogues, field recording adventures, and abstract/deconstructed classical music. In equal ranch hands bizarre and beautiful, reverant and tongue-in-cheek, this album plays with and pokes at ideas of whatever Wild West is to two gents curious about sound’s power to transport.

From Boomkat:

Martens' field recording practices have often led him to consider the relationship between man and the natural world, and here it's even more focused, juxtaposed with windswept Americana guitar riffs and lonesome muted piano. The most obvious comparison might be Eno collaborator Daniel Lanois, who experimented with ambient Americana on albums like 2005's stunning "Belladonna". But Sage and Martens don't imbue their compositions with grandeur or self-satisfied aesthetic fetishism, they use each sound as a cautious warning about the implications of the Western and "Western Living" in general. It's a sobering approach that leaves a bitter aftertaste.

Each song on this LP features an artist and M. Sage (electric guitar, piano) in collaboration responding to a line of poetry by Wallace Stevens. The album is an ekphrastic exercise in turning language into music, a feeling beyond words. Featuring a wide net of collaborators, the album is vivid and cohesive in a kalidescopic way.

From Cerberus: “What’s most magical about Wants a Diamond Pivot Bright is the album’s cohesion…it is not a meditative overture, but rather a work of contemplative interruption. It’s meant to be listened to and not just placed in the background.”

A shirt made to coincide with “The Wind of Things” released by Geographic North. The graphic depicts a three-mark sailing race abstraction. Design by Matthew Sage. Script text by Stefan Kjartansson as seen on the album’s cover.

A 20-some minute expedition through a swirling collage of dissected synthesizer sketches. Approximating finding flower fields by stargazing. Highly potent and packed with moments, deluges, comets, and buds, this sequence of manicured improvisation is as much an early computer as it is a futuristic blossom.