Dado Blade
$10.00 US
Aaron Davidson, Jared Ashburn, Melissa Dubbin & Shawn Onsgard
Audio CD (2003)
58:37 minutes
Track List:
Shawn Onsgard Tracks 01-08
Burning & Looting 14:56
i. Introduction 2:18
ii. Fanfare / Kill Or Be Killed 2:28
iii. A Word From The Oval Office 2:53
iv. Wretch 0:09
v. Patient With a Number of Obsessions 1:49
vi. Only Death Will Make Them Stop 2:12
vii. Conclusion 2:10
viii. Afterword 0:57
Aaron S. Davidson
09. Target #3 : the disaffected intellectual 1:50
10. Inventing the Internet 4:36
11. Silo designs 4:36
12. Death of a keyboard salesman 2:11
13. Baby’s first drum lesson 3:11
Melissa Dubbin
14. Pretender (auld lang sine) 2:27
15. Plait 3:43
16. Mute Swan 4:19
17. Music from the first karate lesson 4:43
18. Spinel 2:19
Jared Ashburn
19. Breezy 3:49
20. The Let Out 5:02
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Liner Notes:
Woodworkers use dado blades to cut channels and grooves, allowing them to make tricky joints and difficult couplings. Creating a sort of architectural sound, Aaron Davidson, Jared Ashburn, Melissa Dubbin and Shawn Onsgard have chosen the "Dado Blade" name for a joint release of their works, since it both correlates with the first letters of each of their last names and also describes their way of creating sound art. The four New York-based artists each cut their own channels and grooves on "Dado Blade," joining seemingly disparate sources, and creating spectacular sound architecture, with airy spaces, clear acoustics and majestic sweeps.
Onsgard's "Burning & Looting," for instance, portrays a fictional "State of the Union" address with audio derived from just three sources: a broadcast of George W. Bush's 2002 "State of the Union" address, a cassette of his favorite high school heavy metal band, and a 1953 LP of a German psychiatrist lecturing about a patient with a number of obsessions. Onsgard's manipulation becomes more important than the source material, as he crafts something completely removed from the original artists' intentions, turning the current conservative rhetoric about "freedom" on its head. Dubbin's "Mute Swan" is composed with very low frequency transmissions of the earth's magnetic fields' mixed with field recordings of birds and manipulated electronics. Davidson's "Death of a keyboard salesman," records the sounds a Casio randomly emitted during the final moments of its batteries, transforming an unintended byproduct of physics into something more lasting. His "Inventing the Internet" captures two Ham radio operators chatting about the information superhighway and mixes it with live electronic accompaniment. Earlier sound architects might have scoffed at Ashburn's chorus of shrill electronic chirping on "Breezy," or his needle-dropping samples and pockets of high-end hiss on the closing "The Let Out," but exposing the seams and circuits succeeds in these surroundings.
Davidson, Ashburn, Dubbin and Onsgard are previous collaborators, having worked together in various pairs before. Dubbin's pulsing "Music from the first karate lesson," for instance, is a live improvisation created for a video work made with Davidson. All four artists began "Dado Blade" with just a time limit, but their previous familiarity and obvious stylistic similarities allow this album to exceed the sum of its parts.
--Tom Roe 2003
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Editorial Reviews:
This joint release's motif can be traced back to its namesake: a dado blade is a tool used by woodcutters to cut complex channels and grooves. The four artists who appear here -- Shawn Onsgard, Aaron S. Davidson, Melissa Dubbin and Jared Ashburn -- make their sounds in a similar fashion, repurposing and rearranging explicit source materials with precise cuts to create new works, distinct from their original context. While the concept of what they're doing isn't new, the foursome accomplishes some impressive output on this twelfth installment of the Audio Dispatch series.
The [players on] Dado Blade work individually, separating the album into four distinct regions. All things being equal, Onsgard's contributions are the most compelling. With eight of the 20 tracks presented, he makes some inspired choices, delivering scrambled death metal on "Fanfare/Kill Or Be Killed" and "Only Death Will Make Them Stop", and manipulated spoken word on "Patient With A Number Of Obsessions". And on "A Word From The Oval Office", his chilling, Negativland-styled collage takes George W. Bush's State Of The Union speech and extracts its hidden, fascist meaning. A marvelous piece, it's one that will make you break into a cold sweat if you have any concern about the world at large.
The other three artists take less obvious paths. Davidson incorporates such sources as chatty ham radio operators and a dying Casio keyboard, while Dubbin processes a combination of low frequencies, jazz performances and field recordings for an digi-organic freeflow that sometimes devolves into the rhythmic. And Ashburn, with his needle-dropping sampling technique, fills his offerings with stuttering windows of sound through crackle and hiss -- a novel approach that I found inspiring.
All in all, Dado Blade is worth checking out. The average ear will hear noise, but discerning listeners will be interested in the different processes at work.
-- Walt Miller , Splendid magazine
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