Conni Stadft – OCF 08
People who used to know me in Auckland will probably remember my friend Theresa Stadft – she lived round the corner from our house in Ponsonby and came with us to the first Big Day Out. About the same time, she formed the duo Conni Stadft with her girlfriend, Jane Conni, and fifteen – no, Jesus, eighteen – years later, they’re still going strong. I’d actually lost touch with the two ladies after I shifted to Mt Eden – the last time I saw either of them was at the party at their house in Tutanekai St which made it onto the front page of the Herald – and it was with real pleasure that we found each other again through that most 21st century of social interactions, the Facbook reconnection. Since then, Theresa has been sending me a steady stream of cd-r’s of their past work, and it’s really cool. Most is sadly unreleased, and it ranges from completely immature Casiotone jokes albums with titles like, ‘Songs about Farting’ – through to heavy chunks of plunderphonics and tape music. Their four-piece psychedelic off-shoot, StarCat1000AD, had a couple of student radio station hits in the mid 200’s.
In the last few years, Jane and Theresa have been producing more serious, electro-acoustic based work which explores the tension between contemporary music’s origins in the body and its movement, and its status as the end-point of a mechanized process. If this sounds too rigorous and academic for listenability, the reverse is actually true. Their present work – and OCF 08 is a great example – is sparse, elegant and moving. In fact, I’m pleased to able to say that I actually appear on this one. A few months ago they asked me to send them a couple of recordings of the most organic sounds I could manage that were not connected to urinating or defecating, or were sexual in any way; so, the samples of breathing and (I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this) toe-nail clipping on the first track are me. It’s set against a background of pure sine-wave prettiness, as are the heavily effected Eastern European vocals on the following two tracks. A lovely, atmospheric release.
Available for free from the DivShare link below. Size: 15.37 Mb.
This and previous releases are archived at http://shearwaterrecords.blogspot.com/
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