now i’m shedding 12″ reviews:
fanatic promotions – shedding hits all the notes that an improvisational minimalist electronic composer should
hand stitched heart – i met the kids putting this out randomly at a show i played in savannah. i had no idea that a town like savannah would have any clue about glitch idm music, but apparently these kids are on it. this 12″ starts off with a subtle but festering soundscape of glitch that sounds like it wants to bust out of something with a melodic attempt here and there. The nature of the music is soothing and yet has a element to it that leaves you from passing it off as just background music. I like the melody in the first song because it reminds me of those really cool physics videos that were made in the early 80’s, damn i wish i had one of those to sample. beats fade in and out like thier teases that want you to keep listening, and what better can that be than music that teases your senses in listening for the next move of the song. This 12″ is actually tease inself too because it leaves us with merely 2 songs clocking in at 11 – 12 minutes each, but maybe that’s Shedding’s aim, to want you to want more, because after hearing this you do want more. The styles of these songs remind me of the same humour and intellegence that you might find on west coast label Audio Dregs, but lingering in a more experimental side where there is melody but i can’t really say that it’s the center of the songs
here. it’s unpretentious yet it’s totally stylish, real nice. i really want this on vinyl. i can imagine that the warmth of the vinyl and it’s glorious natural pops would only make this better and more genuine. A very niceaddition to the experimental electronics world. Grab this one. – john
stylusmagazine – {8.0} A member of Temporary Residence’s Parlour, Connor Bell sets his guitar down for this 25 minute live release on the Home Tapes label. The mood is one of quietly restrained tension as beats flit about making little to no impression on the listener before their disappearance. Overall, it reminds of Mouse on Mars Glam to a certain extent: the melodies are far from syrupy and the sustained tones make for a gentle ambience. Considering this release, however, without mentioning the packaging would be a crime. Custom silkscreened artwork by Jay Ryan and pressed on 180-gram vinyl makes this one close to the total package. [Todd Burns]
mimaroglu music sales – connor’s a good cat. long a denizen of hekla’s sordid online community we met him out there in the ether as a young, hungry fan of sound-at-large, nice to see him graduate from the bedroom ranks into real-world tangibility with such a nice mass-produced object… the first fruits of a new wave of american producer weaned not just on your standard aphecre ocean-crossing electronica but on zany a-musik / köln-lineage damage and the noises that followed it. beautiful, droney, and wise…
vital weekly – Behind Shedding is Connor Bell from Louisville, Kentucky and this 12″ is, as far as I understand, recorded live one evening and just for the sake of the 12″ cut in two. Bell’s music is built out of samples, but he feeds them through software that was designed for him. That results on this record into a strange mixture of Oval electronics, a bit of techno rhythm, and twentieth century electronics and even a dash of cosmic music. All of things are locked into a system that seems to be feeding itself and which slowly builts layer upon layer, and it’s on constant change of size, colour and shape. As the record moves on, things become more and more interesting, and I wished I could hear the full recording – maybe an idea for a CD release in the future. Shedding is certainly a name to keep an eye open for. (FdW)
lost at sea – A dark 180 gram puddle of circular vinyl beautifully packaged in a limited Bird Machine print, wrapped in heavy PVC plastic, Now I’m Shedding is astonishing to look at, intriguing to hear. Like the creative gallery types at Home Tapes seem wont to do, Now I’m Shedding is a partnership between visual art and sonic landscape, a synthesis of the digital experimentalism encoded on the LP with the romantic analog dignity of the print work and the vinyl album. It is quixotic to be sure, appropriate for a funeral visitation as much as it is a wide-eyed morphine trip, an uncredited soundtrack to virtually every human emotion. You can cry over it, fuck to it, escape with it to a distant beach or an internal island. Murky, spiritual, complicated and direct, Now I’m Shedding elicits a landslide of adjectives.
According to what little information available on the project, Shedding is the alter ego of Louisville native Connor Bell, who also maintains form as part of the Temporary Residence outfit Parlour. The warm, sub-surface electro-glitchery of Now I’m Shedding is reported to be a transcription of a spontaneous affair recorded live from a singular performance. The composition is split into two sides for accommodation of the format and additionally broken down, in print, into tracks, but there is little disruption outside of the basic turn table operation. Digital globs float out of a dark haze, burbling with an analog warmth, piercing the surface of a listening plane and crackling into fuzz, hiss, drone and vibration. It is a surreal listen from beginning to end, the songs morphing in and out of themselves, each other. There are unique elements to each “song” but breaking Now I’m Shedding into tracks is futile- Shedding’s output cannot be compartmentalized. Breakdowns and order are irrelevant, stacking and cutting has no value. The songs transcend space, invoking imagery of an underwater realm where drowning is a real possibility. Oxygen is sparse, light almost unable to penetrate the layers, but struggling for breath is ineffectual. The layers are formless, enveloping, unable to be dissected from any angle. There are subtle rhythmic patterns that vaguely outline Shedding’s course, but beats are not crutches so much as accents, tiny hand holds on an otherwise smooth surface. The quilt of ambient sounds recall Nurse With Wound while many of the swirling dynamic elements and extended passages of drone fluctuations and the inclusions of snippets of barely-audible voices nod to classic Labradford moments ala 1994’s Prazision.
we love musique – This 12-inch is actually a live recording from April of 2002. Shedding is Connor Bell from Louisville, Kentucky – a state more synonymous with horse racing and grits than Glitchy IDM. Yet like the fleece of a soon-to-be slaughtered spring lamb, Bell sheds such stereotypes with his undefinable sound. The fact that it was recorded live, however, kind of makes it a screwy format to go with…is this home listening? A DJ tool? Something to be cut up and
reprocessed again and again? No clues from Bell, whose only motivation to commit the piece to vinyl was because he thought it would be neat. Hmm. One thing is for sure: the old-school bootleg logistics of this release have “side project” written all over it. At least Bell comes by it honestly; he also does double-duty with an electro-rock outfit called Parlour (Temporary Residence).Shedding may sound like a break from the staid rock ‘n’ roll format, but no amount of sub-tonal hiss and crackle is going to hide your dirty secret, Connor. (Chris)
music emissions – You may remember the name Connor Bell from the Temporary Residence project Parlour. Well, his alter ego is called Shedding and that’s what this 12 inch release is from. Basically what you get with Shedding is some electronic experiments that are split into two, convenient for a vinyl release. It’s a little along the lines of what Oval does only not as messy. Usually I’m not a big fan of this type of music but Now I’m Shedding has a charm to it that I was kind of taken to. The two sides are pretty much interchangeable and the differences only in experimental detail. It’s a great job showcasing just what can be done with electronics. Review date: 2004-04-30 13:26:29 by Dennis Scanland – Try if you like – Parlour, Windy and Carl, Oval
absorb – The solo endeavour Shedding probably affords Kentucky’s Connor Bell more freedom than he has as a member of the group Parlour. Rather than adhering to predetermined song structures, Shedding’s sound is more spontaneous, judging by the April, 2002 Louiseville performance presented on the 12-inch Now I’m Shedding. The two sides comprise a seamless flow of sound, even though the sleeve identifies three titles on one side and two on the other. The Shedding style is warm and inviting, reminiscent of Oval though less dense and abrasive, with Bell generating a meandering stream of fleeting sounds whose subtle pulsation is more implied than overt. Over the course of its twenty-three minutes, the familiar lexicon of genre sounds emerges—crackles, gurgles, whirrs, clicks, machine grinds—supplemented by distorted voice fragments woven into the mix. There’s no conventional rise and fall here, just an even flow of morphing electronic sounds. Mention also should be made of the distinctive packaging, as designer Jay Ryan and his Bird Machine partners hand-screened a thousand fold-out covers for the release, making each one a unique 12” x 24” print.
grooves – Shedding is the laptop alter ego of Louisville native Connor Bell, perhaps best known for his guitar work as a member of Temporary Residence stalwart Parlour. On this smartly packaged debut, Bell leaves behind the sequencer-rock trappings of his former work in favor of warm ambient oozing and muted glitchery, occupying a space somewhere between Nurse with Wound and latter-day Oval on the spectrum of hazy electronics. Recorded as a continuous performance split across two sides of a 12-inch, this outing offers apt representation of the improvisational fluidity and sonic variety that marks Bell’s recent live outings.
Like kindred spirits Greg Davis and Lullatone, Bell infuses his laptop works with an ample dose of human signifiers that occasionally hint at a sort of calculated naiveté. Every sound is carefully arranged for the maximum impression of organicism—glowing tonal chords fold seamlessly into one another, wobbly crinkles of surface noise keeps time above soft-edged pops, voices seep into the mix and erode beneath the music’s murky drifting. On the A-side, Bell delicately churns this material into a slow swirl of post-rockish drum-machine murmur and gently groaning drones, maintaining a winsome balance between abstraction and that characteristic Louisville moodiness. The B-side offers less consistently satisfying fare, particularly in those places where irksomely self-referential vocal snippets unsettle the music’s somnambulant wandering. Such molasses-paced unfolding requires uncommon patience to sustain, and Bell occasionally seems too eager to cut his threads before they’re fully woven together—an unfortunate tendency, particularly where it detracts from the inviting array of dusty speaker-cone pops and fizzles. Lapses in concentration aside, fans of the recent trend toward pastoral electronics are likely to take pleasure in this offering’s distinct voice, even if they yearn for more refined work in the future.