Acquire digital and/or physical editions at Bandcamp: https://foam-earth.bandcamp.com/album/dust-shadow

Beneath the dense noise of humanity, countless tiny critters fill the air with chittering, buzzing and clicking. Sparse atmospheres seething with intermittent bursts of activity. Vast geological scales cast long contours across space and time, imposing a silent, harsh indifference. The hollow sounds of failed experiments adrift in the effervescent flurry of progress. Intensifying densities and distances. The desert expanse is suffused with the murmur of matter transforming, expanding or disappearing, as dust storms gather in the wavering shadows of the Anthropocene. FoAM

The field recordings and soundwalk condensed into a 12“ vinyl record, consisting of two 18 minute tracks “Dust” and “Shadow”.

Sound design and artwork by FoAM (Nik Gaffney & Maja Kuzmanovic)
Mastering by Frederic Stader @ MusicMattersMastering

Produced in collaboration with Desert Humanities and Center for Philosophical Technologies at Arizona State University (Ron Broglio, Stacey Moran and Adam Nocek)

Recorded and resynthesised with the landscapes and inhabitants of the Sonoran, Mojave and Great Basin deserts, in collaboration with a Sennheiser AMBEO VR Mic (and Deadkitten), a pair of RØDE M5s, Zoom-H6, various cellphones and computers, Ardour, Audacity, Supercollider, unnamed contact mics, their material substrate and the myriad invisible products of human effort and ingenuity.

Thanks to all the animate, inanimate and partially animate participants in the field recordings. Thanks to the dawn and twilight choruses of Cave Creek, crows of the Grand Canyon, itinerant coyotes, guard dogs, javelina and the rock formations in Coal Mine Canyon. Thanks to the creosote bushes, saguaro, nopales and barrel cacti, woodpeckers, rust, gravel, bats, rocks, a family of rodents, rain and dust storms. Thanks to the crickets, beetles, humming birds, wasps, Arcosanti bells, BNSF freight trains, helicopters of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit and assorted air traffic, cars, trucks, sirens provided by the Phoenix Police Department, several fences, and atemporal echoes from Navajo, Hopi, Tohono Oʼodham and “those who are gone”, the Hohokam.

…further details on the FoAM site: http://fo.am/ds-12

The record includes a selection of desert dust which can be used for further physical manipulation of the sound matter. Incomplete without surface noise.