I’m very pleased to be able to bring you this very limited release from Yann Novak. Very pleased indeed. Released as a companion to his art installation of the same name, Relocation is a fascinating, very beautiful and deeply melancholy 3 track work that had me absolutely spellbound from the start. Based on Yann’s experiences of relocating to California from Seattle you get a tangible sense of sadness mixed with optimism and excitement, albeit in a very low-key style. There are a lot of emotions and stages in involved in relocating and this reflects that with subtly shifting tones throughout the works. All are simply beautiful and created with love and care, although they never feel over worked. They simply drift through you using the kinds of textures that make an impact but don’t overwhelm. Melodic at heart, the musical and field recording components have been deftly woven together to create a magical series of meditations on one of the more potentially traumatic events we go through and the sensitivity with which he approaches it is a testament to his wonderful skills as an artist. I’m gushing now, I know, but really this is pure gold for fans of the sculpted minimal electronic sound. It comes housed in a booklet with an essay by Christopher DeLaurenti and really is a release to treasure. I only have a few copies so be quick if you’d like one! Highly recommended.
– Smallfish

Apparently Novak’s Relocation exhibit coincided with a recent personal relocation from Seattle to Los Angeles—though the show itself ironically ended up being presented in Seattle. A booklet-and-CD-R release, Relocation.Catalog includes Relocation.Edits, three abridged versions of the soundtracks Novak created for the installations in the Relocation exhibition with two fifteen-minute settings framing a slightly shorter one. Notwithstanding the tall catalog booklet accompanying the release that contains exhibition photos and Christopher DeLaurenti’s essay, Striation, Erosion, Deformation, Recollection: The Erased Field Recordings of Yann Novak, the release’s major drawing card is the CD-R’s audio documents.

DeLaurenti’s text begins with a discussion of Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953), which involved Rauschenberg literally erasing a fairly well-developed work-in-progress by the Abstract Expressionist. Rauschenberg spent a month erasing the drawing until the sheet, almost purified of marks and lines, revealed that a new work (above) had replaced the old. The historical anecdote offers a natural segue way and neat parallel to Novak’s handling of the material on Relocation.Edits. The erasure here involves Novak effacing field recordings using digital processing, with the sound artist aiming to retain vestiges of the originating field recording while also neutering it of a too-defining and ultimately too-limiting character. While wanting to remain true to the location and time of the recording, he also wants to render it more abstract so as to liberate it from its specific context and allow the listener to experience the final piece as an aural Rorschach. In Relocation.Vacant.Edit, a softly swirling and persistent pool of medium-to-high pitches is punctuated by microsound accents. Relocation.Mobile.Edit is, during its first half, hyperactive by comparison, with metallic filaments massing into a dub-like cloudstorm; after fading to silence, the softly clangorous flow again re-asserts itself aggressively untilt eh ten-minute piece ends. Surging waves of traffic-like sounds roll across long tendrils of synthetic, organ-like tones during Relocation.Dislocation.Edit, with the activity level at as high a pitch as the second. Though Novak’s obviously aware of the locations whose erasure and transformation ultimately lead to the three settings as presented, nothing remains in the resultant works that would enable anyone else to pinpoint their geographical origins, de-contextualized abstraction in this case being the artist’s fully-realized goal.
– Textura