new release
evidence
street date x/x/26
The music on Evidence continues in the spirit of Dismantlists' previous releases, Here at the End (2018) and Pilgrims (2020), but ironically -- despite the even more dire circumstances of our world today -- digging increasingly into warmth and even wonder ... things we need more than ever as a bulwark against dehumanization. I've come to believe that holding on to these irrefutably human experiences is a critical part of resistance.
The cover photos were intentionally chosen: they're vintage analog tape recorders that I've owned since childhood. In invoking symbols of a very non-digital world, I'm honoring an old, pre-digital means of recording before all musical art was uploaded and thus relinquished to the realm of our self-appointed tech gatekeepers - and therefore, perpetually in danger of being either sold back to us for a ransom or erased altogether. We need our memories as the basis of resistance; to know who we are, what we value, and what happened, despite the relentless onslaught of gaslighting we continually face.
As usual, most of the noises on this record were produced by electric guitar, with a small smattering of keyboards on tracks 1 and 2 and Roland guitar synth on track 3.
Performed and produced by Steve Seel
Recorded and mixed at The Blue Room, Minneapolis
Mastered by Bruce Templeton at Microphonic Mastering
Cover photo by Seel
No A.I. whatsoever used
Listen here.
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pilgrims
(2020)
There are definitely similar themes on this album to the ones suggested on Here at the End: weariness, uncertainty, and possibly, hope. That's what living in the second half of the 2010's will do for you.
I suppose there's a general arc to the pieces here: it's a progression from darkness in the first few tracks to greater light toward the end (even though the last track suggests there are clouds still gathering on the periphery). It seemed to me that this was a good summation of our collective experience around the time the album was made -- in relation to both the pandemic and our overall socio-political situation. Were we out of this? Were things getting better, or was there just a temporary veil over the menace? (We certainly got our answer).
Most of Pilgrims was recorded between 2018 and 2020, and built around basic electric guitar -- but there are a few appearances of Roland guitar synth on the tracks "Look Skyward, End Timers" and "Sentinel."
Performed and produced by Steve Seel
Recorded and mixed at The Crawlspace, Minneapolis
Mastered by Bruce Templeton at Microphonic Mastering
Cover photo by Jon McAllister
here at the end
(2018)
The compositions on this album were originally conceived as a kind of reckoning with demons -- some external but mostly internal -- concluding with at least a stab at resolution.
Upon completion of the album, however, a somewhat less-self-centered theme presented itself: a response to the insanity that surrounds us collectively. The album's title is an expression of the feeling of living in apocalyptic times, when more and more of us simply live day to day in a state of unrelenting, sustained uncertainty. Suddenly, the idea of a personal confrontation with darkness seemed to also apply to our universal situation. But in both cases, an end might be a beginning. We can certainly hope that our collective experience of turmoil, while often feeling like an end, is instead the start of a transformation into something different.
Performed and produced by Steve Seel
Recorded at The Crawlspace, Minneapolis
Mastered by Jacob Pavek
Cover photo by Seel
Please support me by listening and purchasing on Bandcamp. Thank you!