Dragon’s Eye Recordings celebrates its 10th anniversary with the release of Idleness, Endlessness by label head Yann Novak. It explores labor, leisure and engagement over two hour-long pieces wrought from source material captured at the Parkfield Artist Residency, a retreat uniquely conducive to contemplation and reflection with invited artists being under no obligation to create anything.
Dragon’s Eye Recordings celebrates its 10th anniversary with the release of Idleness, Endlessness by label head Yann Novak. It explores labor, leisure and engagement over two hour-long pieces wrought from source material captured at the Parkfield Artist Residency, a retreat uniquely conducive to contemplation and reflection with invited artists being under no obligation to create anything (apart from their own meals, that is!)
Between 2012 and 2015 the source material—synthesized tones and radio static collected on a portable synth along with a single field recording of the wind—was processed in the studio and used in live performances. The final compositions were created through improvisation with 5 minute periods of inactivity every 15 minutes to simply contemplate the piece’s preceding, and potential proceeding.
Idleness, Endlessness is composed so the two pieces may be played back to back and looped creating an all-day listening experience removed from the engagement demanded by more conventional music, in some ways a refresh of Eno’s classic Ambient articulation of ‘a new way of hearing music – as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience.’ (Eno, Discreet Music Liner Notes, 1975). But it’s Rilke, rather than Eno, that Novak chooses for the release’s keynote quote:
“I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spend in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.
In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life.
Idleness, Endlessness is available on Dragon’s Eye
