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To order Sea Last, please view this PDF OF AVAILABLE IMAGES and purchase the edition in our online shop. In your PayPal order comments please let us know which original image you want in your book, or email us separately with the request.

Ripples Of Sea Last

The ocean asserts a temporality on each landmass it comes in contact with. Whether perpendicular walls of rock eroded over centuries or tidal beaches that are replenished numerous times across a day, the ocean’s interaction with land is one that creates a cycle based around time and erasure.

Origins of this understanding often start with childhood sand castles on the shore – hours of work in creation of some epic architectural feat are lost in moments by one overzealous wave scouring its way up the beach. In that instant, time spent is reclaimed by the sea – the slate of the shore washed clear, like a memory erased.

Memory is one of the key themes American photographer and composer Taylor Deupree explores through Sea Last. Like many American youngsters, Deupree’s summers were peppered with visits to the Florida coastline where he became fascinated by the ebb and flow of the tides – the constant state of flux, as beaches dotted with footprints, engravings and debris were smoothed over creating effortlessly rejuvenated surfaces.

Sea Last collects images across five days (April 24-28 2008) on a beach in Venice near his childhood holiday home. For Deupree it is a reflection on an ever-transmutable environment that holds both a deep fascination and personal memories for him. Sea Last also eludes to another contradiction of the sea – one concerned with perspective.

Once we pass beyond the shore, the vastness of the water’s surface suggests something of a ‘stillness’ perhaps even a ‘timelessness’. It is a space so epic that it becomes impossible to survey in detail. As one peers out to the horizon or from the window of a plane at high altitude the movement of individual waves are lost – something proposed by American Romantic poet James Russell Lowell who wrote “There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea…”.

Sea Last raises a question of perspective – specifically where we choose to place ourselves as ‘viewers’. Indeed, the camera serves an important function, the film medium itself shaping the viewer’s position. Rather than utilizing a more documentary style approach, Deupree’s Polaroid back Holga – a cheap but unique camera with a low clarity plastic lens – offers a somewhat obscured and cloudy impression of the Florida coast. Within the images nothing is clear or sharp, and instantly they produce a sensation of ‘natsukashi, the Japanese word that refers to sentimental memory (usually with a sense of fondness), and ultimately their blur engenders a ubiquity that recalls the beachside photos we have all taken – familiar yet distant.

Unlike Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes works or Takashi Homma’s New Waves, Deupree tends towards a more personal, subjective and uncontrolled impression of his chosen environment. He takes in the entirety of the shore, from the dunes to the beginning of the sea building a memory-scape we are invited to explore. The 238 selected images, ask the viewer to fill in the detail of the image, edit or embrace the blurs, flares and dimmed corners – and in the process invest some of their own memory in the instant of each Polaroid. Thus Deupree’s subjectivity is mediated by the film stock itself to allow for the viewer’s experiences to become projected into the series.

Equally there’s a mimetic quality to Sea Last’s audio component recorded in June 2008. The textures generated create a washing sweep as sound parcels are moved across the stereo field, their motion creating a gentle lull that suggests tidal flows and the shimmering qualities of blown dune grasses.

In each Sea Last produced, there is one original Polaroid image, making each copy unique and by default limiting the entire edition to 238.

– Lawrence English

Due to continued demand for this title and the fact that the initial pressing of 1,500 copies sold out in less than 6 months, 12k is re-issuing Northern in an expanded package with re-mixed and re-mastered audio.

the audio:
Not content to merely order a re-pressing of the same masters on hand at the cd manufacturer, Taylor Deupree set out to create what he calls the “director’s cut” of one of the most important cds in his catalog. The idea was to open the now-2-year-old computer files to re-mix and re-master the tracks. Of course over the course of years computers change, formats change, and Deupree found himself faced with missing plug-ins, errored sound files and other oddities that made working with the files difficult. What first seemed like roadblocks turned into a mission to work with what was there and re-do what was not. The result is a Northern that will, on the surface, seem quite similar to the original, however listeners will hear new sounds, extended endings, shortened endings and most of all, an overall mix that presents these works with a new clarity and spaciousness. Mastering in the analog domain has given the work a new found sense of delicacy and detail.

the package:
A heavyweight cardboard wallet with debossed typography on the front cover. Inside are two pockets, one for the CD and one for a 24-page booklet of photography, credits, and lots of white space. All printing, as with the original, is in black and white.

the original press release:
The inspiration behind Northern (including its music, title and photography) comes from Deupree’s recent relocation from the heart of urban activity in Brooklyn to the tranquility of the forest in upstate New York. Inspired by nature and the winter during which it was created, Northern, like much of his recent work, explores Deupree’s interest in stillness and a slowed sense of time. Through quiet textures, subtle movements, faint loops and echoes, it was his goal to create the type of music that comes naturally to him while also highlighting the input from his dramatic new surroundings.

In contrast to the brazen repetition found on Stil., Northern more ephemeral approach to Deupree’s theme comes from looking at the stillness found outside of his studio windows: large, looming boulders, the softness of snow, and the hushed whisper of wind and fallen leaves; it is a world of countless tiny movements so active that an implied stillness results from the din it creates.

Deupree’s earthbound ideas in the album are rooted in his choice of sounds and studio practices. His now-signature Kyma manipulations are still prominent, but they have been applied to improvised electric piano, melodica, guitar, and field recordings using techniques picked up from his experimental/pop collaboration with Eisi (Every Still Day, Noble Records, Japan, 2005). A careful balance is kept through the layering of synthetic source tones of basic waveforms and long, drawn-out, fragile swells. Northern is melodic, warm and introspective, forming a bed of sound that is simultaneously quiet and noisy, structured and unsettled, looping and chaotic.

Deupree has dedicated Northern to his closest friend of his teenage years, Bryan Charles Strniste, with whom he first started experimenting in electronic music over 20 years ago. Deupree’s relocation to a nearby area much like the one where he grew up spurred memories of those days of early musical playfulness. Thus, Northern became highly personal and nostalgic while at the same time breaking into new territory for Deupree, echoing the changes in his personal life.

Northern is the first solo CD from Taylor Deupree since 2004’s January (Spekk, Japan), and the first on 12k since the seminal Stil. (12k, 2002).

Touching back upon techniques he explored in the mid-1990’s deupree utilizes multiple time signatures, odd delays, feedbacks, and repetition to play with time and rhythm. The minimal aesthetic is very much in line with what he is doing today, but the stylings are decidedly techno.

One night in April, 2007, the beautiful city of Melbourne, Australia was host to a small gathering of sound-lovers and curious passers-by descending on the venerable Northcote Social Club for a night of subtle soundscaping by Oz-natives Solo Andata and Seaworthy and New Yorker Taylor Deupree, who was in Australia for a tour. After a great meal and despite the ghosts of the BBC hijacking the audio system, the three artists set out to capture the focused listeners with beds of abandoned melodies and warm acoustic tangles.

In hopes to capture the memories of the night, and a snapshot of live audio and all of its imperfections, Deupree recorded the evening with the intent of producing this cd. Live in Melbourne pairs labelmates Seaworthy and Deupree with Solo Andata, anewcomer to 12k, who all share in a similar sonic aesthetic.

Solo Andata performed with laptop and a host of small instruments and electronics creating dense and careful beds of disjointed, yet beautiful music. Seaworthy transformed the stunning, sparse drones of his Map in Hand album into a live, improvised experience that captured all of the emotion that’s created by a single musician and his guitar. Deupree rounded off the night with his characteristically sparse bed of tones and digital detritus.

Favourite Places brings together field and  compositional recordings depicting places of importance and significance within the lives of contemporary artists.

“No doubt everybody must have a place that they call their own. A place which you cherish and go back. Like a forest, the bath, a museum or an alley. These are just four of the examples on this CD of ten pieces of artists’ favorite places which they were asked to record and then treat those recordings into a music piece – both source and composition are inside one track. The whole project comes with photos and coordinates. All neat and carefully planned. The end result is certainly as great. From forest walk by Taylor Deupree to the lighthouse of Biosphere, from the bath of Dot Tape Dot and the studio of Leafcutter John – it all sounds intimate and the music they play as a result of these intimate recordings is of a likewise intimate nature. Drones, glockenspiel, acoustic guitar and rhythms make up eerie music. It moves away from the previous compilations by this label that the artists are better known, musicwise it moves more towards ambient and less to techno music (in all it’s guises) and the thematic approach. Topped off with an elaborate packaging (both print work and jewel case) this is the best effort on Audiobulb so far. Also included are Claudia, John Kannenberg, RF, Aaron Ximm, Build and Nomad Palace. Very lush. ” – Vital Weekly