Single Frame
Bio is Below / But First the Manifesto
Recently, we have been asked by numerous people what we feel we are achieving with altered recording techniques and the use of everyday items (car keys, horns, silk-screens, radios, televisions, fans) in our recordings and live shows.
Various movements in art directly inspire our use of these techniques. In our view, Dadaism especially demonstrated the realization that everyday objects can be seen and appreciated as works of art. For instance, Duchamp's Readymades were simply common objects brought into a gallery environment. Pop art is similar in practice. Instead of common objects transformed by their artistic setting, common practices (such as advertising and graphic design) are presented as techniques worthy of art's recognition.
We aspire to a parallel practice with sound, and we seek to create art , which combines principals of the aforementioned movements as well as others. Instead of everyday objects or practices, we choose to bring forth the sounds that everyday objects and practices make, place them into a new environment, and give the listener a chance to hear and appreciate them in a new way. Sound reflects art reflects life reflects art reflects sound.
Inspired by the darker reaches of nickel theater sideshows, Body/End/Basement, the newest full-length album from Single Frame, serves as a case study in mental instability, vermin phobia, and social dysfunction.
Produced by John Congelton (the pAper chAse, Explosions in the Sky, 90 Day Men), Frenchie Smith (Young Heart Attack, Sixteen Deluxe), j-mprint, Clay Youngkin, and Single Frame and mastered at Silver Sonya in DC's Inner Ear Studios (Lungfish, Holy Ghost, Aloha), the follow up to 2003's Wetheads Come Running portrays a maturation of sound and expands on the concepts of succinctness, diversity, and interlude. Body/End/Basement explores amalgamations of gritty analog and lucid digital, found sounds and volatile rhythms, rational grand piano and deranged fuzz guitar, resonant synthesizer and chaotic chant. Single Frame focused on maintaining an experimental approach to the overall recording process. While collaborating with producers of various musical backgrounds, Single Frame toyed with underwater vocals, paint cans, air horns, broken guitars, pocket change, car keys, washing machines, and secondhand reel-to-reel tapes. Tracks were recorded in 4 studios, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a work shed. In addition to recording on 2 1/2 tape and digital software, Single Frame digitized several four-track demos, layered new tracks over the top, and either tossed out the original 4-track layer or incorporated it as part of the final product.
The release includes a DVD compiled by the Super! Alright! media collective with 9 videos by various directors highlighted by Grammy and MTV Award winner Paul Beck.
Vocalist/Drummer Adreon Henry works full-time as a visual artist in Austin, Texas and designs artwork for all Single Frame productions. The cover art for Body/End/Basement spawns from the 2002 work, "in dark you will see light", on silk-screened vinyl. In addition to screen-printing on vinyl, Adreon's media includes photography, paint, furniture, light fixtures, and film.
Single Frame formed in or around Austin, TX in the year 2000 under the moniker Single Frame Ashtray. They released an 8-song EP, Burn Radio Airtest, through Already Gone Records in 2003, Hybrid Magazine called it "a terrifying technological masterpiece" by "what may become one of the more important bands of the day." Ashtray was then dropped from the name to make it easier to advertise, to comply with a smoking ban, and to make nails scratch heads. In 2004, Volcom Entertainment re-released an enhanced version of Single Frame's first full length Wetheads Come Running with 3 music videos including the much lauded Comm. Jet video by Paul Jones that saw play on mtvU and Musique Plus as well as extensive online coverage. Wetheads Come Running also received extensive critical acclaim; "...evocative and progressive." - Tiny Mix Tapes, and "...a bright, tightly meandering album... - Pop Matters.
Momentous it's imperative that this band's music be brought to anyone and everyone that has an ear for it�ndrew Bryant, Pitchfork.
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