Eternity by the Stars is the new album by Sydney-based sound artist Bluetung aka Mitchell J.G. Reynolds.
There is a limited run of 50 cassettes. In addition to Bluetung's album, anyone who purchases a tape will also receive a private digital download to a bonus release, featuring 8 remixes by ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐ญ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ป ๐ด ๐๐๐๐๐๐, ๐ฏ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ฑ๐๐๐๐, ๐ต๐๐๐ ๐ต๐๐๐๐, ๐ถ๐๐๐๐ ๐ฑ๐๐, ๐ป๐๐๐๐, ๐พ๐?๐๐๐ and ๐พ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. Keep an eye on your inbox. The bonus album will be emailed to you within 48 hours (pre-orders will receive it after June 30th).
โIn conversation, Bluetung mentions Blanquiโs 1872 ๐๐ฉ๐๐ง๐ฃ๐๐ฉ๐ฎ ๐ผ๐๐๐ค๐ง๐๐๐ฃ๐ ๐ฉ๐ค ๐ฉ๐๐ ๐๐ฉ๐๐ง๐จ, a soft reference for this album. A prison text of left-wing melancholy, Blanquiโs is a severely romantic and silly and tender cosmology, wherein the fix-ed stars themselves, ruled by a Principle of Plenitude, evidence the eternal task of revolutionary communism against a universe filled with 19th century suffering.
At the turn of the century, Russian cosmist Fyodorovich Fyodorov worried that Capitalism might โtransfer to heaven the imperfections of the Earth.โ In contrast, Blanqui writes of a universe already filled with worlds like ours. A firmament of our Earthโs past and future ๐ก๐ค๐๐๐ โof offworld parallel timelines (do we live in the worst of all timelines?)โour extraterrestrial comrades โdressed in in pants and cardigan, in crinoline and in chignonโ may be more or less tormented or more or less basking in an alternate world saved by the breaking of chains.
Not to juxtapose Bluetungโs guitar playing entirely to Blanquiโs lovely and tragic visionโฆ but maybe it wouldnโt be too much of a stretch to say that if you squinted your ear, the guitar on this album might be heard to speak the same conflicted language of simultaneous alternatives: sad when it is Major; optimistic when it is Minor. These melodies are poignant, like the 1968 invention of a phaser guitar pedal, when the folk-riff, on electric guitar, proposed in its lead lines that an endlessly repeated song could capture a possible world presenced by and through eternal struggle.
It seems quite right to hear such referential chorusing on Bluetungโs album. One instrument, played tragically alone, is given the effect of being a group of people playing in tandem, slightly delayed, gracefully detuned, shifted along in oscillation and then combined together. Bluetung achieves this effect in Iโm sure quite a complex and sophisticated manner, and importantly, the guitar isnโt the only sound to be minutely and intricately mingled with twins of its own delay. When I played the album loudly, what I mistook as a background of highly textured ornaments of whitish noise, I noticed instead to be the rustle of distinct, individually voiced and almost giddy gestures.
Taking a hint from Blanquiโฆ is the ever moving up and down frequency of a flanger applied to the foreground and background of a song not at all indicative of the starry thing or fix-ed circlet (celestial body :โโ)) which flickers by the grey stretch of night, by the Starlink satellites all in line, reminding whatever looks up that there are unknowable infinities in this great nothing?โ
๏ผ Emile Frankel
We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional custodians of the Country upon which Theory Therapy and Low End Theorists was founded, and recognise that sovereignty has not been ceded. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.
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Mitchell J.G. Reynolds: Guitars, Synthesisers, Homemade Serge Voltron panel, Treatments & Mixing
Cameron Arden: Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus on 3, 6 and 8
Mara Schwerdtfeger: Viola and Arrangements on โProvince Cรฉlesteโ
Butcherbird at Kings Billabong, Mildura: Solo on โSeafrothโ
Joseph Buchan: Mastering
Artwork: Kata Szรกsz
Recorded on Wurundjeri land, at the Myrtle Academy for Physics & Sonics, 2022.
Dearest thanks and love to Krishtie, Joe (.jpeg Artefacts), Hattie, Ella, Harry (Club Moss), Mara, Nico, Justin Daisart, Emile, Cooper AST, Jim Yunzero, Jordan OBA and anyone listening.