Phantoms by Bitter Fictions

"Used to make phantoms I could later chase
images of all that could be desired
then I got tired of counting all of these blessings
and then I just got tired"

Phantoms is an album of pieces I've recorded at various points across the past decade or so, rescued from under the floorboards of disorganization. I feel they carry a nocturnal/haunted/sleepless stargazer motif or sense of narrative. The awe and longing of a meteor shower. Waiting for something. Clarity or lack thereof. Chasing memories, feelings, ghosts. Being lost. Things that change and things that don't. Feeling into nothingness into feeling.

The first few pieces were recorded last month. The rest? 2019, 2020, 2014, I'm not entirely sure. My 'archive' is many mostly unmarked tapes spread across a few boxes, more akin to drawers of strewn about materials than a proper archive. Over time I've gotten a little better at labelling, but for years it's mostly been record until the tapes full, maybe do another session on the remaining tracks, then do it again or move onto the next one. Sometimes I'm playing with compositional intent, but mostly I'm trying to amuse myself. Some things get recorded over and discarded, or set aside for later, perhaps forgotten, etc.

Phantoms in part came out of taking an hour or two every few weeks to listen back to some tapes, listening for anything identifiable or worth working on. There are clues -- if I hear something that's been released, if I hear certain tunings or techniques, how it's recorded -- but for the most part it's chaos, stacks and piles of assorted tapes from over a decade's work, albeit several now with labels like "probably fall 2018?"

I can recall the following about some selections included here:

"Gare à pied" is an 'outtake' from Hour Reducer, recorded in Montreal in late 2019. Instead of playing guitar to whatever the microphone was picking up outside my apartment window (as on the pieces of that album), I reversed the process and played a tape into the guitar pickups after establishing a theme. This was a recording taken on a walk near a vacant train stop near my last apartment there, some drift caused by my walking and an air duct or two, as well as moving the tape player around the pickup field.

"Light Pollution" and "What Comes After" are from two dark blue tapes with no labelling whatsoever. The music is more on the syrupy drone/ambient side of things I was doing in my mid 20s, and at least one is recorded with a microphone (those telltale pedal clicks and muted volume strums). Those dark blue tapes were repurposed unsold copies of my second release, and so with those clues my best guess is these two pieces are from around 2014-16ish.

Part of doing something as long as this involves a degree of, if not diaristic expression (however overt or hidden), then at least the personal marking of time and place, chapters documenting parts of oneself and tracing development over time. There is much that remains on the cutting room floor of various tapes and hard drives, some best left there, some forgotten but ripe to repurpose, and some vital but long waiting for the right framing. Though I suppose little of that matters if it's not 'out there'.

--d.f. september 2024

small label by D.F.

est 2010

an introduction:
https://bndcmpr.co/893503ab

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