Sean Clute

(Note: This album is meant to be played as one continuous track from beginning to end. On some platforms the tracks are necessarily broken up. I realize that in this day and age it is unlikely to be played continuously, but I want you to know its intention nevertheless.)

I dream of traveling through vast landscapes. This work is composed of those dreams, following an invisible presence (perhaps a spirit) through different terrain and states of being.

The piece grew out of a collaboration with body-based artist Erin Ellen Kelly for her MFA thesis at Bennington College. I created music for her performances, which involved seven dancers and video. The music emerged through improvisation, later settling into forms that became the foundation of this album. Part of the album’s title is drawn from her thesis, Lingering Imprints and the Dirt Eaters, a phrase that continues to resonate through the work.

I think of the work as unfolding in six continuous sections. It begins with chimes. These chimes come from a field recording made at a pet sanctuary outside Kanab, Utah. I encountered them unexpectedly while on a family tour to a nearby slot canyon. The guide pulled over the van so I could get out and listen. I have never heard so many chimes at once; there must have been hundreds of them. I later learned that each chime marked the final resting place of an animal. This is where the piece takes shape: the spirit of the animal, communicating through the wind activating the chimes, beginning its journey through the landscape.

The next section moves downward, into the soil. The foundational sounds were created by placing contact microphones directly into the earth of my garden. These recordings were processed and interwoven with synthetic tones. To give a sense of movement and time passing, I included samples of bells and a woodblock. These sounds reappear throughout the work.

Slowly, the work rises out of the ground and into the forest. The rustling of quaking aspen leaves marks this transition. These sounds were recorded in Colorado. I wanted to capture the feeling of ascent from the roots to the branches. Once again, wind becomes the animating force. In this space, the album’s more overtly musical material enters, as a number of computer-synthesized arpeggios emerge. This section ends with processed bells and a gong, again marking the evolution of time.

The fourth section I call Imprints A. You will hear the sound of frogs—one of my favorite sounds in my home in Vermont. The chorus of frogs is a welcome return after a long, quiet winter. I can hear them surrounding my house but cannot see them. Like the wandering spirit of this work, their presence is known only through sound. The accompanying woodwinds are inspired by this form of communication.

The penultimate section, Imprints B, is the entire piece up to this point sped up in time. It is the imprint of the album’s sonic journey.

In the final section, ocean waves appear. I think of Lands End near San Francisco. A field recording of the waves is shaped through automated bandpass filters. At the end of the album, a wave is filtered by a wave derived from itself. I’m not entirely sure what it means, but it feels as though logic and intuition are inevitably intertwined. A completion. A conclusion. Or the return of a presence at the end of a journey.