Almanac Behind - Record out November 18 2022 - Three Lobed Recordings https://threelobed.bandcamp.com/album/almanac-behind
Almanac Behind - Film out November 20 2022 - Three Lobed Recordings
Our planet, Earth, has experienced at least 1.3 degrees Centigrade rise in temperature since the industrialization of the biosphere began.
From the heart of Delhi, to Tangier Island. The burning redwood forests, the dying jet stream waters. It is happening to you and to me. We pump carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere by the gigaton as the cascading feedback loops of climate breakdown continue to destabilize the biosphere. Oh, the wind and rain. We have all lived it. Stunned by the unfathomable power of our Earth and a sinking derealization about our tenuous future.
In 2022 alone, we have seen a staggering array of destabilizing climate related events. Heat waves, mixed with below average rainfall, are drying up major rivers across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, threatening vital infrastructure related to food production and transportation. Blackouts in Pakistan, caused by the hottest spring on record, fade into unimaginable flooding scenarios caused by melting glaciers and unprecedented monsoon rains, inundating 1/3 of the country. 40C in England, 42.7C in France, 46C in Portugal. The Conger ice shelf collapsed in Antarctica, fueling global sea level rise. Fires burn out of control across the western US while 40% of the country remains in drought. They burn in the Brazilian Amazon, Central Africa, Australia, and Siberia. A warming Earth drives animal migration, threating new viral outbreaks. Co2 in Earth’s atmosphere hit the highest level in 4 million years. NOAA announces 7th worst hurricane season in a row. Ocean temperatures rise at a rate of 5 atom bombs per second. Wynn Bruce self-immolates in an act of compassion outside the US Supreme Court. More fires, floods, droughts, mass mortality of pollinators, trees, animal life, and people. Arctic tipping points have already passed. Earth’s sixth mass extinction.
"Almanac Behind" exists in this space. The title is both an anagram of Daniel Bachman’s name and a reference to the fact that rapid environmental changes have rendered traditional weather forecasting methods woefully unable to accurately predict our future. Over fifteen tracks, "Almanac Behind" guides the listener through natural disaster and its aftermath, via a series of field recordings by Bachman and his collaborators. The guitar, banjo, fiddle, and other instruments are presented in neutral modal tunings, avoiding conventional harmonic representations of mood and sentiment, and are often digitally altered in both subtle and obvious ways. At its core, "Almanac Behind" is powered by the sounds of the Earth, tones inherently familiar to the billions of people who have experienced extreme weather. It is an attempt to emotionally contend with and foster connection over a shared global experience.
“Barometric Cascade (Signal Collapse)” begins with wind blowing through front porch windchimes as the storm approaches. Broken segments of cut-and-pasted slide guitar improvisations play over a tanpura-like guitar drone. This effect is created by recording improvised guitar pieces to tape, converting them to WAV files, and then cutting up the source material to rearrange/manipulate digitally. The slide guitar crackles out of a thin radio speaker, achieved by broadcasting the recording to a home radio via an FM transmitter, recreating the changes in radio waves disturbed by atmospheric influence. As the storm gathers, the radio signal collapses into squelching tones. Local NOAA weather radio, “8:35 PM KHB36 (Alter Course)” cuts through the static and relays a year’s worth of emergency weather broadcasts recorded by Bachman at his home in Banco, Va. The chaotic thumps and strums of a 12-string guitar warn of the events unfolding. An emergency broadcast plays over church hymns recorded by Sarah Bachman. The signal morphs into “Bow Echo/Wall Cloud,” a series of repeating audio patterns made from traditional Appalachian rain signs rendered into WAV files through a computer program created by Zeph Mann.
“Gust Front (The Waiting)” follows, with solo banjo playing an uneasy cadence as winds gather in tight mountain valleys. The storm begins almost instantly in “540 Supercell,” where a now-driving banjo and frogs, recorded in the mill race behind Bachman’s house, are easily overtaken by waves of hissing rain and hail. “10:17 PM KHB36 (The Warned Area)” returns with an updated emergency alert of imminent flooding in the neighborhood. Disparate radio transmissions swell as the broadcast is overtaken by the rising water. All that remains when “Flood Stage” opens is repeating AM radio static, slowed 43 times to create a pulsing rhythmic pattern that drives through the entirety of the track. The same cut-and-paste technique used earlier is repeated here to create a buoyant slide guitar melody, like a dead log floating down a swollen river. The flood waters rise during “Inundation (The Blackout),” in which the sounds of all of Virginia’s major rivers at flood stage flow into one sonic stream. Tree limbs, pulled into the water, scream in high pitched wails. Electrical lines flail wildly as all sound condenses into a single point, then silence.
A match is lit in the darkness as “Wildfire (Smoke Over Old Rag)” begins. Here, Bachman has built a fire from field recordings, YouTube videos of Virginia wildfire responders, harmonium drone played by Tyler Magill, and a beat created by rendering a photo of the sun setting behind Old Rag Mountain, red from West coast wildfire smoke, into a WAV file. “Think Before You Breathe” is audio of dying fire recorded by Dianne Bachman, significantly slowed to exaggerate its final gasps for air. The warbling guitar floats to great heights with the smoke, consistently interrupted by glitches and abrupt pitch drops. “3:24 AM KHB36 (When The World’s On Fire)” breaks out of the relative calm with the drone of hand-wound emergency radio crank underneath clips from the 2022 IPCC report, time signal radio broadcast, a smoke inhalation alert, and a performance of the Carter Family’s gospel tune “When The World’s On Fire” on slide guitar by Bachman, and guitar accompaniment played by Van Burchfield.
The tired and mournful banjo solo, “Daybreak (In The Awful Silence)” represents exhaustion and frustrated resignation during an extended power outage. “Grid Reactivation” comes suddenly, rushing down the lines to reach the transformer, powering on the A/C, radio, and other temporarily-muted appliances. Improvised electrical pulses, provided by Will Thornton, strobe across the damaged grid. “Five Old Messages (MadCo Alert)” await. Telemarketers, scams, family, and the electric company play as your eyes adjust to the bright light outside. Now, as cleanup begins, comes “Recalibration/Normalization.” The cut-and-paste technique is repeated one final time to represent disorientation of facing a new reality in the aftermath of disaster. The slide guitar echoes in lush repetitive segments, picking up where the initial radio broadcast left off. At its end, we again hear wind rustling the porch chimes, signaling storms on the horizon. "Almanac Behind" ends as it began, and can be played on a loop, mirroring the cyclicality of these new Earth patterns. The only thing that has changed is that the listener has now also experienced them.
Our planet, Earth, is to surpass 1.5 Centigrade rise in temperature in 5 years.