“Vinyl—the format exists in multiple dimensions.”
“My mother brought home Sgt. Pepper—the original U.S.-released, Capitol label—and handed it straight to me. I was eight. We had my grandmother’s record player, an imposing piece of mahogany furniture about chest high on a grown up. I stood on a chair and watched Sgt. Pepper go round and round while that mind altered and altering music pouring out. It smelled of hot wiring and the speakers were covered in tweed.
The music was three-dimensional, happening all around me. But it existing in a fourth as well—time—either moving past me or I moving forward through it. Yet the record was flat. Two dimensional.
Mom explained how the groove of the record wound around the disk, each tightly packed against the next, and how the needle travelled along it. So, it was a line, too, not just a disk! And the needle was a point on it! And the whole thing moved, but the needle stayed still, right there in the record player, while tangerine trees and lovely Rita and ten thousand holes filled the room like a Maurice Sendak dream.
That was when my eight-year-old mind went poof. I’ve never been the same. That copy did not remain the same, I still have it, but it’s basically unplayable—a veteran of uncounted spins on a string of crappy kids record players. I don’t think it even survived to see my first real stereo, but by then I could play the whole record in my head note-for-note.
Some inanimate things are rich in metaphor. Vinyl is one. The needle travels the line, or the line moves past the needle. A whole world jumps into being around your ears and parades by (or hurtles, or flows—it depends of course) but while the observer’s inner eye stays still. Or does the observer travel forward? Still figuring it out.
In Heroes of Toolik, we have done both vinyl and CD releases. Our newest, Like Night, will be released initially on CD and digital, but the possibility of a vinyl LP is not ruled out. Heroes of Toolik does not make background music and Like Night is best experienced as a complete performance, although the songs stand nicely on their own too.
It’s a question of cost, really, against the benefit of getting our music out as quickly and broadly as possible. The ideal, however, is a listener with Wohlforth’s and Coates’s beautiful artwork in hand engaged with our music as only playing a record can do, the ear standing still (or moving forward, sorry, still puzzling that) or through the music while Toolik spins in place.”
—Arad Evans
Like Night, Heroes of Toolik’s full length release is in stores now.
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