Delicate abrasions and corruption of their instruments from the NY duo of Erica Dicker (Till by Turning) on violin and Dennis Sullivan (Radical 2), 9 works of improvised soundscape and avant-raw chamber music through prepared strings, tapes, looped feedback, resonant metals, modified snares and liberally bowed surfaces, richly constrained and luxuriously blood-curdling.
"Blood Luxury (Erica Dicker, violin and Dennis Sullivan, percussion) announces the release of their eponymous debut. The album presents a collection of abrasive, sometimes fragile pieces recorded in 2019. Already steeped in darkness, as if in anticipation of the despondency and desolation to come, Dicker and Sullivan invoke the most raw and vulnerable aspects of their psyches in a ritual ode to impermanence. Influenced by their mutual appreciation of various sub-genres of metal, Blood Luxury is an amalgamation of Dicker and Sullivan's experiences rooted in improvisation and avant-garde chamber music, enabling them to seamlessly fuse the timbres of their otherwise contradictory orchestration.
Across this nine-track offering, Blood Luxury navigates their way through over-pressure-laden distortion (Gride Tourniquet); airy, harmonic-drenched microtonal-soundscapes (Flexuous Flicker); and opaque forms sculpted with prepared strings, repurposed cassette tapes and feedback-loops (Entropy Undone and Inverted Necromancy), all the while inhabiting a world of smoke and mirrors where violin and percussion are indistinguishable. Dicker deploys her instrument as a contemporary noise-machine, sometimes attacking the strings with closet bolts and other hardware-store treasures or simply exploiting every bowable surface as she deftly traverses its entire harmonic spectrum. Sullivan maneuvers his way through a collection of modified snare drums equipped with makeshift guitar strings and bridges while also traversing a battery of resonant metal objects, junk-percussion and lo-fi electronics.
Blood Luxury is a limited-edition cassette of 100 with direct shell imprinting and original artwork by Erica Dicker. The name Blood Luxury is taken from an unmemorable yet evocatively-titled song on Whitesnake's 1982 album Saints & Sinners. The guerilla-style recordings were captured while in residence at Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Boscawen, New Hampshire; Ridgewood, Queens and from a live show at the Sunview Luncheonette in Brooklyn, New York. The audio was mixed and mastered by Caley Monahon-Ward in July 2021."-Tubapede
Limited-edition cassette of 100 with direct shell imprinting and original artwork by Erica Dicker.