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STEVE RODEN

walking from savoonga to gambell

LINE artist Steve Roden returns with a new collection of five modular synth works. Drones, loops, and jittering melodic tonalities form a strange alien analog soundscape.

“at age 6, my father moved from los angeles to alaska for a year, and i have always wondered what the alaskan landscape would sound like (and i don’t mean just the nature sounds, but voices, landscapes, animals, insects, etc.)

at certain times, i would cock my ear, hearing in my mind’s ear, a dry and oozy atmosphere that began to grow into a landscape resembling like the landscape of tarkovsky’s stalker—dusted mossy sun of smoked sky tasting like old radish. as a kid who grew up in los angeles, alaska was certainly “other”—and completely outside of what i knew—except for the snow.

years, after my father passed away, i had no need to be interest in the real alaska, because for all those years i was building my own alaska inside of me. in the few images my father left to me, his snapshots of alaska look a bit like joshua tree desert in summer, while the winter images seem the land of white carpets of snow. in many of my father’s photographs there is a feeling of emptiness—as if the yellow or white lines along the middle of roads, would lead to nowhere…and as such, i see these images as triggers towards creating a sonic atmosphere… leaving my own works, feeling more like places than stories.”

_

3 years ago, i decided to stop working with the sound tools i had been using since the early 1990’s. the decision to shift was not because i was unhappy with what i was making, but i started to feel as if knew what i was doing; and so i felt the need to change my tools in the hope that things would feel different or difficult.

after talking to friends, it was suggested i  mess around with an analog synthesizer. ideologically this was an immediate problem, since the integrity of my sound practise was rooted in using “poor materials” (mostly found objects, stones, contact mics, and “junk”), and now i am one of a number of sound friends who have migrated into the modular realm (for better or worse). for my own means, the modular is a difficult partner, not so flexible, with a lot of learning curves – and far from someone like an improvisor like me.

i remember asking a manufacturer about what a specific module was supposed to do, and he said “it’s all about control”; and in his response i realized i had found a way collaborate with an instrument by simply using it wrong. there are no fancy moves here, just patching cables between modules until i find something like a tide pool (it moves but feels still). these tracks were recorded live in my garage.

Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Reviews

'the radio station at nome' (excerpt) by STEVE RODEN from LINE on Vimeo.

Catalog:
LINE_090
Format:
digital
Edition:
open edition
Release:
September 2017
Tracklist:

1. the radio station at nome (06:09)
2. ha-ya-aayaaa-ya or yaia (08:13)
3. this is for anyone who wants to dance (10:36)
4. hellicopter song (12:41)
5. the whole room throbs (13:24)

all sounds by steve roden
mastered by taylor deupree
thanks to richard, sari, taylor, yann, robert, franck.

copyright 2017 Steve Roden
published 2017 LINE

STEVE RODEN (1964-2023)

Steve centered his life upon the making of connections and meaning by experimenting with visual imagery, music, language, code, translation, listening, and the amassing of various collections of objects and ephemera. In a KCET Artbound interview with Sharon Mizota from 2012, he shared, “It’s a very personal way of moving through the world to connect things that really weren’t meant to be connected.” Steve built his life in much the same way as he constructed his visual musical scores or his paintings, drawings, collages, sound installations, and films. He thoughtfully translated his intimate observations of the “unnoticed” things in his environment or another artist, writer, philosopher, architect, or musician’s work and made something new-always bringing the past forward, personalizing his conversation with the material, and churning it into a poetic and relevant aesthetic experience for the present. In a recent email exchange with Fulcrum Arts Executive Director Robert Crouch, he shared “Steve could create a simple set of rules, inspired by the most humble and mundane materials, and through his process, create and share something utterly gorgeous, unique, and transcendent.”

Since 1986, Steve consistently exhibited and performed his work in the United States and abroad. His artwork is held in many public and private collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and San Diego, and National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece. Steve was featured in the Hammer Museum’s landmark exhibition “SNAPSHOT: New Art From Los Angeles” in 2001. In 2003, he had his first solo exhibition with his LA gallerist Susanne Vielmetter at her first location on Wilshire Boulevard. Vielmetter plans to present an exhibition of his work in fall 2024. In 2010, the Armory Center for the Arts organized “in between: a 20- year survey” and Pomona College Museum of Art simultaneously mounted “when words become forms.” In his review of these projects, Los Angeles Times Art Critic Christopher Knight wrote, “Looking at a Roden painting, sculpture or projected film, you sense this interaction of formal system and cryptic intuition,” and he likened Steve’s art to the work of Paul Klee, Alfred Jensen, and Arthur Dove. 

Throughout his life as Steve’s musical interests expanded from punk and post-punk to electronic, minimalist, and beyond, the artist tuned his attention to listening. Inspired by experimental sound artists and composers like Brian Eno, Meredith Monk, Rolf Julius, and Morton Feldman, Steve developed his own style of music and performing known as “lowercase.” Steve’s vast and impressive discography and landmark releases include “forms and paper” (2001, 2011 Line, and on vinyl 2024 Aurora Central Records); “i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces” (2011, Dust to Digital); and “Oionos” (2022, Room 40), a track originally created for the exhibition “The Grand Promenade” (2006), Athens, Greece. Musician, friend, and producer Lawrence English expressed, “In this world there are some artists who listen so very deeply, who cherish the minor, the incidental, the unexpected, the hushed; Steve was one such artist.” English elaborates, “Not only did Steve cast his ears outward, with a generosity equaled only by his curiosity, but he asked us to do the same. Together, we leaned into a world of sound so rich that we might not believe it could be possible. Steve not only guided us to and through that world, but he created it.”

Traveling the world to perform in sound art festivals and exhibit at museums and kunsthalles, Steve met and collaborated with many like-minded contemporaries including Steve Peters, Doug Aiken, Stas Orlovski, Michael Ned Holte, Michael Raphael, Alexandra Grant, Simone Forti, John David O’Brien, Toti Mercadante, Alison O’Daniel, Jeffrey Roden, and others. Visual and sound artist Stephen Vitiello, who performed with Steve in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, and in a Donald Judd desert installation for the “Marfa Sessions” exhibition (2008), recalls a recent and personal moment, “What I’ll remember for the rest of my life is my last visit with Steve. He was deep into the illness, and he seemed to have stopped making music and logic was slipping. He wanted me to see his father’s guitar. We spontaneously started to jam and played for a whole hour. His guitar was out of tune, but he was actively listening and responding. He managed to retain his singular sound and make something strangely beautiful and deep.” 

Having a penchant for archives, ephemera, and the work of deceased 19th and 20th century artists, poets, and philosophers, Steve dug through notes, old letters, catalogs, manuscripts, and sketchbooks to look for ways to have an aesthetic conversation with the likes of Walter Benjamin, John Cage, Par Lagerkvist, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Harry Bertoia. In 2008, curator and former LACE director, Carol Stakenas, collaborated with Steve and the Getty Research Institute in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles on a re-invention of Allan Kaprow’s seminal “18 Happenings in 6 Parts,” originally presented in 1959 at the Reuben Gallery in New York. Stakenas had this to say, “What made working with Steve on 18/6 remarkable was how it brought us into the generative/creative space . . . full of improvisation, curiosity, and presence. Regularly, I re-read the letter he wrote for the event program ‘dear mr. kaprow (an approach to 18 happenings in 6 parts).’ Now, when I read the text, this line of Steve’s stands out. . . ‘i think your work suggests that struggle only gets you to the starting point, while an open mind is needed to truly embark upon the journey.'”

Steve Roden leaves behind a prolific and profound body of work. In the 2012 Artbound segment he speaks about the making of art as a learning process and the only way to do it is by experimentation and failure. He also says, “. . . painting is like the sun and all of the other media hover around it.” Glenn R. Phillips, Senior Curator at the Getty Research Institute, has commented, “Steve Roden had that wide-ranging curiosity and joy in experimentation that all great artists have. At the heart of his work is an incredible sense of play that can delight in taking an idea from the mind to the page, to the canvas, into sound, into space, and then back to the mind again. He understood the beauty of slowing down and allowing an experience to fully work its way through the body and the self.”

inbetweennoise.com

REVIEWS OF
walking from savoonga to gambell

  • While Steve Roden’s work can be enjoyed plenty without knowing much of the context or processes within, it can enhance his richness as an aural artist to dig deeper under the surface. His latest for Richard Chartier’s reliably solid Line imprint marks his first since 2010’s Proximities, and it is the first for the label to feature his new practice of modular synth tinkering. Those who are used to the peppy, step-sequenced arpeggios and patterns of M. Geddes Gengras or the undulations of Anthony Child’s recent two albums may be surprised to hear Roden working in a very different style here, but those familiar with his work as a sound artist previously will not. Tinkering and experimenting in the most genuine sense of the word has always seemed to be the driving force for Roden, whether in the sound or visual realm. It’s interesting to hear Roden’s self-anointed “lowercase” aesthetic and process translated to the modular synth, wherein perhaps similar techniques yield quite different results. Just as drawing with crayons is very different from painting with oils, his trial and error experiments that resulted in most of the album’s contents are built on subtlety and nuance but stand in contrast to some of his previous material. Their subtly rhythmic patterns of pitches that wander in and out of and amongst themselves create a sort of perpetual motion of pitchiness.

    “this is for anyone who wants to dance” indeed is likely the closest Roden has flirted with overt rhythm in such an obviously electronic way, but its persistent tenor hum quickly fades from a backbeat to a ruminant drone, looping little reverberated doodles overhead. Those cycling phrases and patterns recall techniques present even in his earliest material as in be tween noise (Roden’s early work, incidentally, is now available on his Bandcamp page, well deserving of renewed attention), and even if the toolkit has changed, the meditative and inward quality of his output remains in tact. Even the modular chirps and looping tones of “helicopter song” feel akin to the handmade objects and toys that comprised his old toolkit, feeling at home in his repertoire but still feeling somehow renewed or with a shift. My favorite of the five pieces is probably the last and longest one, “the whole room throbs.” Underpinned by what could pass as line noise, its electronic gurgles and tiny patterns bristle for a good thirteen minutes. By virtue of repetition and its muted palette, it manages to be both tense and meditative at once, until it abruptly stops and ends. That Roden is willing to embrace different tools and techniques once again supports his continued exploration of challenging the new and unfamiliar, something I find consistent in both Roden and Line’s greater bodies of work.
    (earinfluxion.com)