Utech Records Fine Art Series

I just found out that one of my best friends and one of the most brillaint / beautiful / inspiring ladies in the whole world...fill in the blank with a compliment of your choice here ... is working on a new project and I couldn't be any more excited about it. Please allow me to brag. And I am pretty certain the Strereogums and Brooklyn Vegans of the world won't be posting about this so read on!

Runhild Gammelsaeter, singer of the legendary doom group Thorr's Hammer will be releasing new music as part of a collaberative series on Utech Records. Here is a bit about it from the label site.

Utech Records and Stephen Kasner Collaborate on Fine Art SeriesUtech Records will invoke a connate soul next year in visual artist Stephen Kasner to develop a second fine art series of cd releases for the label. The series, as yet unnamed, will comprise nine volumes of 750 copies each over the course of 2008 beginning in April. Kasner has committed the bulk of his next year's output to painting original and exclusive canvases. His subject matter has yet to be disclosed, but the artist has spoken in general terms of a new direction he wants to explore in his work. A package unique to the series has been designed to highlight Kasner's residuum and the accompanying music.

The foundation of the series is the belief that a visual device can bind a disparate body of music in a meaningful way. The genesis of this idea was first explored with photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg in 2007 and the result was Utech Record's acclaimed Arc Series. Fruit borne from that venture has led to this stab at further examination. Kasner immediately saw value in the theory and agreed to help cultivate and refine it.

Artistic study aside, the guts of this series is the music and the conviction that it alone will give rise to its life. Utech and Kasner discussed at length the curatorial undertaking and a virulent battery of musicians was selected. Skullflower, Heavensore, Runhild Gammelsaeter, Fuyuki Yamakawa, Aluk Todolo, Final and more to be announced at a later date.

Sure to be an archetype for the music/art proposition in the coming year, the series has been intentionally left open ended. The two have agreed to let ideas evolve naturally and it will remain to be seen just how far things will go. There is a lot on the table and not all of it is being revealed at this point.