released April 15, 2013

Format: Hand-numbered edition of 100 C40 cassettes with letterpress printed and hand stamped j-card
Duration: 38 minutes
Label: Notice Recordings (NTR024)
Country: USA
Artwork: Evan James Lindorff-Ellery
Including: Acoustic Filters, Pump Organ, Modified Boombox I
Date: 2011–2012 (composed), April 2013 (released)

Recorded in Fljótstunga, Iceland and High Concept Laboratories, Chicago.

Composed by Noé Cuéllar & Joseph Kramer.

Thank you to Halldór Heiðar Bjarnason & Lilián Pineda, Evan James Lindorff-Ellery & Travis Bird, and Molly Feingold.

"Since late 2009 we have developed compositions using a modified boombox – a tape loop machine that records and plays back simultaneously. Sounds that enter it are released within seconds, sounding gentle feedback. Our first compositions using this boombox and a shruti box marked the beginnings of our collaboration as Coppice, and a phase of up-close entwinement of both instruments in decidedly quiet gestures. Since then, we have expanded our dynamic palette and range of instrumentation to include more bellowed instruments, custom instruments and other electronic processes.

Last Fall we began imagining what has become Pied, a composition for tape, pump organ and the boombox. Its form contrasts the tapes’ fibrous processing with the more tabular appearances of microtonal pump organ transpositions – performed quietly but loudly amplified to bring out interferences and resonances by means of the original microphone techniques.

On one hand, Pied is a stark display of our sounds as solo artists, but in a borderline duet: five pump organ sections (recorded in Summer 2011 at Fljótstunga, Iceland) alternating with their boombox mediation and trails.

On the other hand, developing this piece at High Concept Laboratories has been a careful and entangled collaborative process, working directly with tape, scoring multiple generations of processing, and using a variety of acoustic resonators for coloration.

Although our compositional ideas may be fixed, the boombox’s response to these ideas is inherently oracular. Sections of Pied switch between several takes of the same content on tape, each sounding completely different from the other. We decided to keep many sonic incidentals and utterances across the many coats of the boombox’s reflections, also as a way to reveal the audible transparencies in the tape that didn’t erase. Towards the end of the piece, a snippet of our piece Seam seeps through the layers (what may perhaps be a recording from a performance in November of last year).

It is in this dendritic way that our work continues to develop, with fractions of past works refracted, and with certain sonic aspects highlighted at the expense of others." –Coppice, February 2012

For more information visit coppice.futurevessel.com and instagram.com/futurevessel.

Support: futurevessel.bandcamp.com/album/epoxy

Side effects:

"Just saw this Chicago based duo play a spectacular live show […] These guys combine cracked electronics with harmonium (or pump organ, or some damn thing) into brilliant extended pieces of generally quiet, slowly unspooling sounds. It seems as though their approach would result in a series of discrete musical events, but they manage to give their compositions a narrative cohesion that transcends a lot of similar work." –Byron Coley, The Wire – Issue 363 (2014)

“Pied (on Notice Recordings) and Epoxy (on Pilgrim Talk), both cassette releases using different instruments and recording techniques but in essence with the same sort of compelling intense drowsiness.” –Pim van der Graf, Progress Report (2013)

"Coppice, formed in 2009 by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer, has quickly established itself within Chicago’s experimental sound scene, placed firmly along the lines of composers like Haptic, Olivia Block and Cleared. The duo has branched out into many creative sound settings, but Pied finds them returning to their original inspiration: a boombox modified to play back and record simultaneously. Here, they feed it with recordings made on a pump organ while recording in Fljótstunga, Iceland, resulting in some extraordinarily pleasing and hypnotic tones. But it’s the duo’s meticulous pacing and dynamics that makes the piece work as it moves between deeply engaging organ drones and decaying tape textures. The result is more exquisite proof of Coppice’s unique vision of creative and honed sound exploration." –Nathan Thomas, Fluid Radio (2012)

"Coppice is a North American duo composed of Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer, who have already released several innovative records in recent years. The two musicians belong to this new generation which flirts with both minimalist eai and the most radical sound abstraction. Coppice is often a kind of lo-fi and archaic noise music, sound reduced to its electrical and physical components.

This duo has since used a new instrumental device present on this cassette, a device made up of a harmonium, cassettes and loops, as well as acoustic filters. And it is certainly the latter which are the most important and make Coppice's music new and original. Because it is these filters which sculpt and work each sound in a singular and homogeneous way, which reveal the sonic properties of the cassettes and the harmonium, of the loops and the blower, which confuse and harmonize them.

It is still an abstract (and innovative) dive into sound, but a dive that is easier than usual, less dry and austere. The mechanics of the harmonium, and the cassette loops, produce pulsations and form cycles which make listening easier this time. And generally speaking, the two sides are more linear and less deconstructed than before, the rhythmic cues as well as the form close to the drone allow the listener to immerse themselves body and soul in the sound masses of Coppice. We thus easily allow ourselves to be immersed in this post-industrial (and post-eai) and archaic universe of abstract noises that are ever more profound and abysmal, ever more new and captivating." –Juien Héraud, Improv Sphere (2013)

"Can you imagine sounds of melting icebergs drifting in the ocean? Or maybe you were listening to CDs with similar sound recorded that were popular few years ago? So the first track of the new Coppice CD sounds approximately the same. If I am not mistaken, they are playing on shruti boxes: the sound of extending bellows interlacing with low stretching sounds of the mechanism, and scratching/scrubbing sounds on instrument surfaces with neighboring varieties of knockings. On Coppice's “Pied”, as well as on “Epoxy”, that was released earlier this year by Pilgrim Talk, the format is of a big importance – causing a lo-fi aesthetic and its specific “hissing” in music. All of this makes you feel under a spell, giving charm to the music of Chicago natives; you can’t logically explain the effect. Toward the end of track the iceberg is transforming and humming unexpectedly, and you hear someone operating a sawing machine beside it. By the way this piece is not lengthy.

And, besides, talking about Coppice music as a whole, it’s hard not to mention that their music evokes many images and associations. When they emphasize rhythms, almost each fragment provokes scenic imaginary from industrial machinery.  The sounds of amorphous structures provoke imagery of the animal kingdom. Abstract noise is creating some specific associations and memories – maybe this is what sets Coppice aside/apart from the rest of musical crowd. This quality attracts as well as makes you bored if you listen to them too often and in length.

But this music leaves some aftertaste. And this is a good thing." –Ilia Belorukov, CMMag (2013)