We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

S​/​T

by SUMMER OF SEVENTEEN

  • "Summer of Seventeen" LP edition
    Record/Vinyl

    LP edition of the debut LP by Summer of Seventeen on Karlrecords. Available in the US from SIGE Records. Edition of 300. Cut by Helmut Erler at D&M, Berlin. Art and design by Faith Coloccia.

    Sold Out

about

LP version available in North America from SIGE Records. Digital and LP available worldwide from Karlrecords. Go here to listen/purchase digital:
karlrecords.bandcamp.com/album/summer-of-seventeen


SUMMER OF SEVENTEEN are: Monika Khot (NORDRA), Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer, Mara), Aaron Turner (SUMAC, Old Man Gloom), William Fowler Collins and Daniel Menche.


Wildfires plagued Washington state during the summer of 2017, their smoke drifting westward toward the Seattle area and toxifying the air. Shortly before that trauma, MONIKA KHOT, WILLIAM FOWLER COLLINS, DANIEL MENCHE, FAITH COLOCCIA, and AARON TURNER had gathered at the latter two musicians' House Of Low Culture studio on idyllic Vashon Island with revered producer RANDALL DUNN. There they cut eight songs that capture the makeshift band's feelings of what COLOCCIA calls “a kind of doomsday lurking in the background.” It's as if these highly attuned players had a premonition.

"Summer Of Seventeen“ - which was edited and arranged by MONIKA KHOT, who records apocalyptic music solo as NORDRA and plays in the avant-rock band ZEN MOTHER—is a nuanced admixture of these musicians' sounds and a culmination of all of their previous collaborations. COLOCCIA and TURNER have created eldritch folk and chamber rock for over a decade in MAMIFFER while engaging in various solo and group projects that explore their profound spirituality in sound. MENCHE has been a fixture on the abstract composition scene for 31 years and COLLINS is a savvy explorer of drone and ambient forms. Their ephemeral summit meeting has yielded a masterwork for the ages.

A heaven/hell and beauty/beastliness dichotomy pervades the album—as if a titanic struggle was transpiring in that small studio. The fearsome trumpet fanfare that starts “Chorus Of The Innocents” heralds a baleful fate. With a subliminal industrial rhythm bristling beneath the eerie exhalations, the song submerges us in a slow-motion maelstrom, a horror-film facsimile of MILES DAVIS' “Bitches Brew“. “Perceived Slight” threads death-metal screams through a stark, suspenseful atmosphere, with austere glints of guitar and beats like fists on a casket lid intensifying the dread.

Angelic chants and celestial drones perfume the air in several of the songs on “Summer Of Seventeen“, countered with muted blast beats, serrated hums, jagged glitches, simulacra of grinding gears and lightning. It's as if no good deed goes unpunished. “Spirits Of Redeemer” could be an elegy for the human race while “Cultural Orphan” sounds like a symphony for a malfunctioning factory. The album ends with “Theatre Needs An Audience,” a harrowing ballad somewhere between EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and MERZBOW; it's a savage rent in the space-time continuum.

“Thinking about this record now,” COLOCCIA recalls, “it seems like we were all sort of anticipating something like this current pandemic happening, although we were thinking about it as fire in the hands of man (literal fire, and also gunfire) that would overturn the normal running of things and reveal the current false beliefs systems holding up most of America.”

That grave aura infiltrates “Summer Of Seventeen“, However, a hopefulness bubbles beneath the foreboding architecture of sound and noise summoned here. The bunker is the new penthouse.

-Dave Segal, April 2020
credits

credits

released April 2, 2021

Recorded and mixed by Randall Dunn
Edited and arranged by Monika Khot
Produced by Randall Dunn ands Summer of Seventeen
Mastered by James Plotkin
Vinyl cut by Helmut Erler at D&M, Berlin
Art and design by Faith Coloccia

tags

about

SIGE Records Vashon, Washington

SIGE Records is owned and operated by Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner. It was founded in 2009 and is based in Vashon, WA.

contact / help

Contact SIGE Records

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like S/T, you may also like: