FROM THE ARTIST: From the proposal sent to musicians at the onset of the project:

Reigning Cement is an A/V project I have been concepting for some time now. The initial idea came from an exercise I had participated in years ago in which the exact same packet of visual assets was sent to multiple collage artists. Each artist was allowed to do whatever they pleased with the materials and once completed the finished artworks were compiled and published in a volume.

The idea for Reigning Cement is essentially the same, only instead of visual collages I am approaching each of you asking you to create sound collages, or songs if you will, with assets supplied by myself.

I have been collecting sound samples from my environment using just my iPhone and a small Shure mic that plugs into it. The sounds consist of trains, jackhammers, garbage trucks, concrete saws, general construction and demolition, you get the idea. I recorded each while getting around the industrial neighborhood in which I live and have a studio. Since I am a bicycle commuter I have the opportunity of capturing these sounds while going about the everyday.

These sounds are not precious or well recorded - I am not by any means a sound person or a musician. They were not sought out but rather gathered along the way, and were recorded with a few things I keep in my pocket. Their imperfect and spontaneous nature is embedded into two long standing concepts, that we can be creating at all times from anything at all, and that we can act as constant conduits transforming our surroundings providing portals to endless alternate realities through each of our individual and unique perspectives.

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