Description
SASSAS Records V1.2: The Nels Cline Singers / Solid Eye / Sterling Ruby
- Side A: The Nels Cline Singers, Ghost Ship (2013)
- Side B: Solid Eye (Rick Potts, Joseph Hammer and Steve Gregoropoulos), Live [excerpt] from sound. at the Schindler House (Recorded by Damon McCarthy)
- Signed Print Edition: Sterling Ruby
Price upon request.
SASSAS Records builds upon the organization’s sixteen years of producing innovative programming that operates at the nexus of experimental sound and art practices. V1, the introductory first volume, includes three LPs featuring tracks by Aaron Dilloway, Nels Cline, and Lee Ranaldo, with covers by Dave Muller, Sterling Ruby, and Analia Saban.
Each release features a B-side selected from the SASSAS archive by the A-side artist. Packaging for each album includes a 12” LP on 180 gram vinyl with SASSAS Records label and logo designed by Tom Recchion, the signed and numbered cover artwork, an insert with details on the tracks, digital download code, and an archival sleeve.
Nels Cline, sound. at Sacred Grounds: Solo Strings, April 2000 (Photo by Cindy Bernard)
Nels Cline is an American guitarist and composer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s playing jazz, often in collaboration with his identical twin brother Alex Cline, a drummer. Since then, Nels has worked with a wide range of musicians in punk and alternative rock, notably Mike Watt, Thurston Moore and Wilco. He also leads the groups The Nels Cline Singers and Nels Cline Trio. Cline has performed on over 150 albums in the jazz, pop, rock, country, and experimental pop music genres. He continues to expand his audience as a member of the Grammy-winning rock band Wilco, which he joined in early 2004. In February, 2007, Cline was chosen by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the Top 20 New Guitar Gods, and given the title “The Avant Romantic.”
Sterling Ruby
Sterling Ruby makes richly glazed biomorphic ceramics, large-scale spray-painted canvases, poured urethane sculptures, nail polish drawings, various forms of collage, and hypnotic videos. His work is a form of assault on both materials and social power structures. He takes his subject matter from a wide range of sources, including marginalized societies, maximum security prisons, modernist architecture, artifacts and antiquities, graffiti, bodybuilders, the mechanisms of warfare, cults and cult members, and urban gangs. He holds a BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena CA. Sterling Ruby lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by galleries Sprüth Magers, Xavier Hufkens, and Hauser & Wirth.
Solid Eye
Solid Eye, formed in 1992, is the triumvirate of Rick Potts, Steve Gregoropoulos, and Joseph Hammer, each a longtime participant in the contemporary experimental music scene. The group is known for creating soundscapes that can be at once ludicrous and haunting. Hammer employs an ad hoc array of consumer audio technology, tape loops, samplers and analog synthesizers to blur the boundaries between digital and analog. Rick Potts, a founding member of the Los Angeles Free Music Society(LAFMS), has an idiosyncratic methodology that may include playing the electric guitar with an electric toothbrush or street sweeper bristles, as well as employing saxophone, xylophone, musical saw and analog synthesizers. Steve Gregoropoulous joined Solid Eye in 1999 and is best known for his work with WACO, the Wild Acoustic Chamber Orchestra.
