Photo by Justin Hollar
Following the tender piece Slips Away PETER SILBERMAN, leading man of THE ANTLERS has announced is solo debut release Impermanence. The 6-song featuring record is supposed to continue the emotional odyssey he started with his band and it arrives on February 24 via Transgressive Records.
In an extended press statement SILBERMAN explains the character of the release:
Much of what distinguishes Impermanence from its forebears can be attributed to an unexpected injury, which forced me to consider the finite. A few years ago, I developed a hearing impairment that resulted in a temporary total hearing loss in one ear and an excruciating sensitivity to everyday sounds, including my own voice. In order to find rest and quiet, I left my Brooklyn apartment for a secluded setting in upstate New York.
It would be some time before I experienced silence again, thanks to a constant blizzard of tinnitus. Once silence ceased to be available to me, I came to think of it as the luxury of well-calibrated perception. We mistakenly perceive it as nothing, but it’s precious, a profound entity. It became obvious to me why many prayers are silent, performed in immaculately quiet spaces.
As the sensitivity and static began to subside, I gradually re-introduced sound into my world, gently playing my nylon-string acoustic guitar and whisper-singing. Eventually songs emerged— Karuna, New York, Gone Beyond, Maya, Ahimsa, and Impermanence— each sparse and minimal. I was conscious to only say what needed to be said. The six songs have an economy of expression, the spaces between the words as important as the words themselves. I often thought of the Miles Davis quote: ‘It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.’
‘Impermanence’ – Artwork
As writing neared completion, I linked up with my friend and collaborator, Nicholas Principe, to record at his People Teeth studio in Saugerties, NY. Together, we carved out a sacred sonic space, elongating the distance between notes, between chords, utilizing minimal arrangements to allow breathing room. With the help of mix engineer Andrew Dunn, we repeatedly ran tracks through aged tape until the songs themselves decayed.
But the album goes beyond experiments in ambience. It traces the stages of healing, as I experienced them. The sequence mimics the challenges in facing unexpected obstacles, charting a circular course between pain and peace, in which both are passing phases.
Impermanence illustrates our uncertain world, where everything and everyone is a temporary participant. It provides no remedy for the unpredictable, but instead offers another way to think about changing circumstances. I hope it can provide some comfort to those of us grappling with transition, which is, undoubtedly, all of us.’
You can enjoy first music from the record in the form of the wonderful openeing Karuna and the dreamy New York right here.
‘New York’
‘New York’ is a lament for a relentlessly impermanent place. It’s a song of estrangement from streets that became unrecognizable in no time, and the end of a dissociation from sounds I’d come to ignore.
I’ve strung together this video from collections of footage archived in the public domain, from open-sourced memories of an obsolete city that maybe never was.
Through reorganizing these aimless images, I found a story of flight from crowded cacophony, a quiet struggle against New York’s stubborn gravitational pull, and a memory just beyond reach.
‘Karuna’
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