Jacob Smigel is hosting a CD release party for his new album, Hope This Passes the Secretary on January 16 at The Trunk Space.
The Las Vegas transplant. makes "warm thoughtful folk and found audio" and while the folk is good the found audio project is really the coolest part. As Jacob describes it:
Eavesdrop: a wealth of found sound is a collection of anonymous recordings found at thrift stores, yard sales, and in trash bins over the past four years. These unaltered tracks come from audio or micro-cassettes, 8-Tracks and home-recorded records. Many of the clips are segments from audio diaries, tape-letters, the sound of road trips, fights, crying, family moments, telephone conversations/messages, or the amusements of children or the mentally handicapped.A minimum of editing or manipulation was used in the making of this album. I did not add music to the tracks (or mash them up), but instead served as preservationist (or curator) to present the listener with the most powerful recordings in their natural state. Some are funny, some are ridiculous, others make no sense. A few are so 'perfect' I can't believe I actually found them.
Eavesdrop is a scattered documentation of what I call "the golden age of personal recording (1965 - 1986)." It is about the wonder that is putting our experiences, feelings, and lives down on tape. The album's ~80 minutes is spread over 40 tracks. The album includes 28 pages of track notes, transcripts, background information, and additional resources. Album art is a collage of found photos collected over the past two years, and each CD comes with unique "found scraps." In addition to this, six of the album's tracks spawn whole other albums that are available as hand decorated CD-R's.
If that's Smigel's last record I can;t wait to hear this one.
