Last month we published issue 6 with a sneak peaked a preview of Z O N E S by Petridisch with a four page spread, a brief description of the project and a hint that a VHS release was on the way. It’s finally here!
The album released on Louisville label, Infinite Sync, as a 5 track-5 Zone project; with each Zone having it’s own feel and effect. I implore you to ask the question, which Zone affects you the most?, after listening and let Petridish know. If you’ve already read it in issue 6, then give it a listen on Bandcamp or grab a physical copy of this wonderful experimental release:
Petridish talks Z O N E S
“These are stills from a film being released on October 31st of this year called
“Z O N E S”, which will feature an accompanying album of new musical material. The music was written and recorded in various states of consciousness, so I wanted to reflect that in the visual rendering. At first the concept was to be shot on VHS-C ex- clusively, at five different local locations — there are five sections to the audio — with some footage being taken (and subsequently discarded) at Spectacle Island and in the center of the city of Waltham, where I grew up.
With the weather becoming increasingly temperamental in the Boston area, getting to these different (and disparate) locations was proving to be a task. So in lieu of some fancy production, one rainy day I went outside my apartment and acquired some footage of the area goings-on with my new-old VHS-C camcorder. Some of the more interesting footage shows the (sad) gentrification of my street. One really cool thing worth mentioning about this camcorder is it has some sort of digital image stabiliza- tion ‘chip’, so if you shake it really hard you get all sorts of weird glitches and pauses on tape. This method of getting a (truly) “VHS” glitch effect was used in the entirety of the filming of “Z O N E S”, and is shown in most of the stills presented here. The others use Chromakey and opacity filters to create a sense of dissociation not in the original footage.”
The Z O N E S album is born out of my previous ‘chord experiments’ which involved taking a key and using the scales semi-blindly to create harmony and dissonance alongside the base note drone. Mainly this was done for creating extended duration live performances, but I also noticed that as I performed in real-time this way, my head (and body perhaps?) would basically play around in a meditative ‘zone’ simultaneously outside and very much of the self, which strangely enough would guide where I would place the next musical events.
Z O N E S takes this idea further by saying ‘What if the zone existed before the music? What then?’ By using ‘basic’ ‘meditation’ ‘technique’ (with a heaping helping of binaural beats at times) I put myself quite a bit in extremely similar headspaces that the doing the chord experiment performances would create. Once the techniques set in and my ‘being’ was sort of as clean of a slate as I could get, I would make my way to the computer and keyboard setup. I would gather loops, create patches, and perform loosely ‘how I felt’ for as short as 3 minutes, and as long as 22 — basically for as long as the headspace stayed. No overdubs, no backtracking.
This cassette is the only way to hear the “hidden Z O N E S” … Extra material that didn’t make it onto the final Z O N E S album and consists of the entire Side B of this cassette tape.
This VHS tape is limited to an edition of 10.
This VHS contains the all original Z O N E S Film, a work recorded on VHS, and then edited, by Petridisch himself.
KITE0080 thoughts: I purchased a copy of the cassette because I love owning physical mediums that get published in VS (but Thor is a great friend too, and I was passionate about the project). The cassette came plastic wrapped and (probably) produced by duplication.ca which means it’s high quality. I think it sounds even better on cassette as the hiss of my player seamlessly blends into the “Zones” Petridisch has transported us into. If I didn’t move around as much, I’d totally own the VHS release but I know I’ll never own a player, but if you scanned the QR in issue 6, you’d know the visuals are a melancholy blend of brick and city — it’s a perfect fit for the sound. It’s a small 10 edition release, and one I think is special because we rarely see black and white VHS releases. It’s a unique aesthetic. Great release, and one I think experimental fans would love to have in their collection.
