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Marconi's Shipwreck

by Erstlaub

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  • DVD + Digital Album

    Hand-stamped dvd-r (limited to 100) in a slimline dvd case with beautiful artwork from Dave Fyans. Each copy comes with beautiful colour artwork and a transparency of a sonogram of the entire piece, plus a free download of the album.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Marconi's Shipwreck via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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      £4.50 GBP or more 

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  • Digital Album
    Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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  • Full Digital Discography Full Digital Discography

    Get all 80 broken20 releases available on Bandcamp and save 60%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Correspondence 2: 4 Impulses, Correspondence 1: Cordiform, Slow Notes For Piano and Voice, Blast Lock, Slow Notes For Monty Don, Slow Notes For Bakunin, Slow Notes For Voegelin, Mijmeringen, and 72 more. , and , .

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about

Please note: due to Bandcamp's file size limitations, this 1 track 71 minute release has had to be split into two seperate tracks. Each download also contains the downnload link, from our server, of the complete piece.

Broken20's resident drone sage David Fyans aka Erstlaub brings his latest work to digital and DVD-R in
the form of 'Marconi's Shipwreck'. It follows his now traditional modus operandi of a single longform sound
work comprised of smaller discrete pieces that are created entirely through synthesis, but builds on previous
releases such as 2011's 'The Last Few Seconds Before Sleep' by delineating a fuller, at times bass-heavy
dynamic, whispered percussion and ultra-distilled Berliner dub moves.

The piece was inspired by a notion from radio pioneer Marconi that sound waves, once created, can never
die; rather they fade with time as they drift through time and space. Fyans writes that “From the age of radio
onwards, we have been cast adrift in a sea of technology, waves of information crashing against our hull.
Technology has the ability to connect people, it conversely can also lead to intense feelings of isolation, lack
of human contact and disconnection. And so, we find ourselves scuttled, clinging to the wreckage we drift,
trying to make sense of these new horizons we inhabit.”

As part of Fyans' degree show in Time Based Art this summer, the idea was extrapolated into a spiralling
meditation on communication in the digital age, where passion, friendship and interaction are reduced to the
click of a 'like' button.

Sonically and visually these concepts are translated into a focussed study of decay and loss. The audio
builds on the touchstones of previous releases (sheeted dark ambience, grain echoes, cinematic dread) by
adding white noise snare hits, creeping fuzz, monolithic bassweight meditation and fragile picked melody.
The video was created using tail-chasing 'films of film' to create layers of feedback loops and otherworldly
dream machine simulacra depicting busy friction between violently dying information packets; confused, lost,
or as Fyans puts it, “little more than hundreds of people shouting and nobody listening.”

Genuinely beautiful, unquestionably forlorn and at times righteously angry, it's a massive step forward for
a producer whose philosophy, intellect, spirit and skill now converge into a wordless sermon on charred,
crumbling connections and a tentative, careworn eulogy for those diamonds bereft in the ash. It's his best
work by some distance; accomplished, heartfelt and pensive.

'Marconi's Shipwreck' will be available as a digital release and as a DVD-r that includes a download code for
digital sound files of the album.

credits

released August 28, 2012

written and directed by D. Fyans, 2012

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