Composer Nathan Davis to Release New Album EARTHWORKS On Sono Luminus in April

Award-winning American composer and percussionist Nathan Davis will release his new album Earthworks featuring spoken word by actress Sylvia Milo on Friday, April 25, 2025 on the Sono Luminus label. Earthworks is an innovative eco-focused audio installation that encourages audiences to think critically about the world around them and their impact on the earth. Earthworks investigates our relationship with our natural and built environment, the geologic time cycle of building materials, and the waste stream of construction.

Earthworks was originally produced as a sound installation for the exhibition Planetary Home Improvement: From Just-in-time to Geological Time, conceived by Christine Giorgio, Amelyn Ng, Gabriel Vergara, and Nathan Davis. The exhibition was commissioned by and installed at the VI PER GALLERY in Prague from December 2021 to February 2022. This particular iteration of Earthworks is immersive - both as a recording and a full-body experience, primordial and post-industrial in nature. Davis collected field recordings of raw materials and created a multi-channel sound environment using the materials themselves as speakers, soundboards, and resonators. It is musique concrète as composed through a big box store.

A 40-minute conceptual and musical love child of land art and environmental activism, Earthworks is a unique acousmatic piece in which Davis orchestrates the sonic outcome of common commercial building materials. It is an audio tapestry of drilling, fracking, stirring, slurring, scraping, cracking, popping, and hammering, with the bright thread of one very intimate human voice woven through it - that of actress Sylvia Milo. Milo begins the album by intoning the names of construction materials - objects that are used as instruments and as the varicolored speakers through her voice and all the album's music were recorded. The text is adapted by Christine Giorgio from instructional videos for DIY home improvement projects.

Instrumental samples were played by Nathan Davis, with additional samples played by fellow International Contemporary Ensemble members, cellist Katinka Kleijn (Tracks 2, 3, 6, 7), percussionist Levy Lorenzo (2, 3, 7), violinist Josh Modney (2, 3, 7), and clarinetist Joshua Rubin (2, 3, 7). Earthworks is Davis' first solo project with Sono Luminus, previously appearing on the label with International Contemporary Ensemble as a percussionist.

Much of the power of Earthworks derives from what the exhibition artists describe as "collapsing the ancient and the instant." There are non-material aspects embedded here as well, such as the political context of the work: a response to the industrial plunder of the planet. The experience of listening to these materials speak, hearing their breath and pulses, moves us closer to a relationship of awareness and reciprocity with the Earth, whose body we tear apart in order to achieve shelter or convenience, and whose riches we violently transmute into material for use.

Earthworks Track Listing

Nathan Davis (b.1973) - Earthworks (2021)
1. Exposition [1:45]
2. Circulation [8:42]
3. Weathering [8:35]
4. Erosion [5:50]
5. Extraction [4:37]
6. Installation [6:47]
7. Regeneration [3:46]

Total Time: 00:40:08

Nathan Davis (composer), instrumental samples
Sylvia Milo, voice
Katinka Kleijn (cello): tracks 2, 3, 6, 7
Levy Lorenzo (percussion): tracks 2, 3, 7
Josh Modney (violin): tracks 2, 3, 7
Joshua Rubin (clarinet): tracks 2, 3, 7
Christine Giorgio, text adaptations

Producers: Nathan Davis & Daniel Shores
Recording, Mixing, & Mastering Engineer: Daniel Shores
Artwork: "Planetary Home Improvement: From Just-in-time to Geological Time" by Gabriel Vergara
Photography: p.5 - Nathan Davis; pp.6/7 - Planetary Home Improvement: From Just-in-time to Geological Time; p.9 - Charlotte Dobre; Illustrations by Gabriel Vergara, mounted to speaker panels designed by Nathan Davis, photographed by Zdeněk Porcal (Studio Flusser), used by permission from VI PER Gallery (Prague)
Liner Notes: Peter Catapano
Layout: Joshua Frey
Executive Producer: Collin J. Rae
Recorded January 9-10, 2023 at Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, VA 22620

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