Description
Songs and Photographs
Anthony Wilson
180g vinyl LP and a photobook in a sleeve; Swiss lay-flat binding; 31.2 x 31.2 x 1.2 cm; 48 pages; 22 color images
2018
GHR-005
ISBN 978-3-944630-04-5
Little Steidl and Goat Hill Recordings
Printed in Germany by Little Steidl
Songs and Photographs
Anthony Wilson
Most mornings I wake up and go out wandering with my camera, sometimes in my hometown of Los Angeles, often in places around the world where I am traveling on tour. I look, watch, and take in the space around me. I’m conscious of my attentive state, totally absorbed in noticing things.
My path determines itself, each picture leads me to the next. It’s a meandering journey through a landscape or cityscape, but also through my own personal experience. Often the smallest things are what stop me in my tracks and compel me to point the camera and snap the shutter.
A bird flying toward a bird feeder
An almost windowless house next to an empty field
Formal suits for rent in a shop window
A “Twister” game painted on a concrete playground
At these moments I sense that a fleeting intimacy of the everyday has opened up to me, and I feel lucky to be present to witness it. The world is alive to me as a place of wonder, improbability, and visual fascination.
I take pictures, recording my perceptions and observations onto the film, and, in this way, they become communicable and visible to another.
This reportage has seeped naturally into my songwriting. In my notebook, I write down thoughts or verses that come to mind, also chronicling what I observe and experience.Lines from one place and time find their partners in lines from another place and time. Melodies appear, rhymes and meters coalesce, harmonies resolve themselves.
In Songs and Photographs the visual and musical paths of my process converge into a single work in which the songs and the photographs speak back and forth to each other.
Making pictures has shown me this: anything I see, experience, or feel has the right to be in a song. And putting those actual things — the tiniest moments — into my songs, has paved a way toward expressing the personal and the intimate in a fullness I had not quite realized before.
– Anthony Wilson
Read more under “Technical Details”.
Songs and Photographs
Anthony Wilson
AUDIOPHILE RECORDING OF THE YEAR AWARD 2018
This edition encompasses a 180g vinyl LP and a 48-page photobook in a sleeve.
Musicians: Anthony Wilson, Gerald Clayton, Joshua Crumbly, Patrick Warren, and Jay Bellerose
LP:
Side A:
The Palmist’s Hand
While We Slept
Song from a Dream
Great Dream from Heaven
In Canton
Side B:
Songs and Photographs
Listening to My Heartbeat
Fear of Losing
Start Somewhere
Over the Sea
Object dimensions: 31.2 x 31.2 x 1.2 cm
LP: 180g vinyl, 33.3 RPM, audiophile pressing
Cover dimensions: 31.2 x 31.2 cm
LP-cover: indigo colored board printed in silver
LP-sleeve: transparent mylar
Photobook:
48 pages; 22 color images
Text in English
Softcover lay-flat binding (Schweizer Broschur); cover is made from an indigo colored board printed in silver; stitched book block has a traditional, hand-applied dispersion adhesive and linen reinforcement on the spine; book block is glued with a dispersion adhesive onto the inside back cover and the cloth-covered spine remains free.
Trimmed dimensions: 31.2 x 31.2 cm
Sleeve: sapphire blue colored board printed in silver
Materials:
Book paper is GardaPat Kiara150g, a wood-free, acid-free, coated paper produced without optical brighteners at Cartiere del Garda in Riva del Garda, Italy.
LP labels are Fly Extraweiß, a super-calendered, wood-free, and acid-free paper produced by Schleipen Papierfabrik in Bad Dürkheim, Germany.
Colored cover boards are Les Naturals in sapphire blue and indigo from Cartonnerie Jean in Bonnat, France.
Silver ink is Miracle Silver from Huber Group and Eckart, provided to us as a special gift from Gerhard Steidl.
Printing: the book, covers, and LP labels were printed by Nina Holland on Little Steidl’s Roland 200 offset-lithographic press using a four-color process for the book, silver inks for the covers, and indigo and silver inks for the LP labels.
All songs by Anthony Wilson, except Great Dream from Heaven (traditional)
While We Slept and Song from a Dream were commissioned in 2014 by Jazz at Lincoln Center for the concert series New Jazz Standards.
The recording was produced by Joe Harley and Anthony Wilson.
Mixed at Studio 835, Los Angeles
Engineered and mixed by Michael C. Ross
Assistant engineers: Wesley Seidman and Alejandro Baima
Mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, Los Angeles
Pressed by Rick Hashimoto at Record Technology Inc., Camarillo
All photographs by Anthony Wilson
Editor: Nina Holland
Book and packaging design: Nina Holland
Heidelberg drum scans from 35mm color negatives, color correction, and separations: Nina Holland / Little Steidl
Pre-press and offset-lithographic printing: Nina Holland / Little Steidl
Binding: Hartmut Köhler Buchbinderei, Rodgau
Sleeve construction and label die-cutting: Bruns Kartonagen, Göttingen
