VANESSA SKANTZE: Captured Howls Premieres “River” Off Writhing Treasure Feast; Soundtrack Nears Release Via Scry Recordings

Photo by Anima Nocturna

“…like a dismal yet familiar return to a place of emotional roots… The music feels reminiscent of the kind of music that might soundtrack a lonesome funeral on a secluded hillside. Without any necessarily physically overwhelming components, those behind ‘River’ have funneled piercing emotional intensity into the gradually growing stream of sound.” — Captured Howls

Stream / Share “River” At THIS LOCATION

Captured Howls is currently streaming “River,” the closing hymn off activist and luminary Butoh dancer VANESSA SKANTZE‘s Writhing Treasure Feast.

Writhing Treasure Feast is a soundtrack to SKANTZE‘s solo dance exploration. Here, SKANTZE explores the sounds of the fierce beauty, pain, resourcefulness, and resurrection of the land, the people, the creatures, and elements of the original Americas, dancing with the gods of Mexico, North America, and Haiti primarily. Writhing Treasure Feast draws from the artist’s travels to Mexico and Haiti, her experience and initiation into a Vodou Sosyete (community) in New Orleans, and her residency in Seattle, the traditional land of the Duwamish People.

SKANTZE produced, directed, choreographed, and performed the live dance elements of the piece as well as conceptualized, co-produced, and commissioned the music, photography, original text, and painting aspects of this magnum opus which incorporates the skills of a host of vanguard sound artists including Masaaki Masao, Erymanthe (Joy Von Spain and Susan Dumett), Pink Void, Greg Campbell and Sioux City Pete, Morher, and Noisepoetnobody with Uneasy Chairs and Cailleach.

Featuring lush and unexpected soundscapes divided into seven sections: “Stone,” “Sea,” “Wind,” “Fire,” “Serpent,” “Muck,” and “River,” the offering was recorded and mixed by Marc Tweed, mastered by Casey Chittenden Jones, and includes artwork by Ambrosia Bardos and photography by Anima Nocturna.

Writes Captured Howls, “The track begins with a solemnly understated yet cacophonous mixture of emotionally weighted-feeling tones gently mixing and flowing into and out of each other. The tones, ringing out like somber horn blasts across some ominous, overcast expanse, extend quite comprehensively to the point of enacting an immersive sense, even in the absence of more traditional beats and melodies. Eventually, faster segments creep in, and some of the tones began to streak across the mixture. While the core maelstrom continues on, streaking flashes of sound appear like lightning strikes across that overcast, emotionally still and chilling expanse…”

Read more and stream “River,” featuring Noisepoetnobody and Cailleach, exclusively at CAPTURED HOWLS at THIS LOCATION.