The Californian sound collagist shares an exclusive example of his experiments in “truck stop concrète”
“I was trying to fuse country music and a meditative ambient type of music, which I also listen to really heavily in my life,” says US artist Phil Geraldi, speaking with Emily Bick in The Wire 479/480, explaining the idea behind his latest release AM/FM USA. “I listen to a lot of ambient music in a literal sense [...] something that can be put on and can serve as background experience.”
Following much activity with various experimental noise projects – such as Mystics In Bali, Shock Tropics, Soul Searching Squadron and Tabloid – Geraldi has returned to a focus on sound collaging, which he started to explore as far back as high school when his mother gave him a dictaphone she used for work. AM/FM USA sees Geraldi layering and combining recordings of steel guitar and radio static, intended as a road trip soundtrack.
Created especially for The Wire, this audiovisual work follows a similar vein, and is accompanied with this statement of intent from Geraldi: “Country music is in open rebellion against the totality of cosmic improvisation. The comfort of narrative is its shield and its sword. But its failure is as inevitable as it is ephemeral. The banality of pain and joy seeps through; in the unraveling is the message. Turn the dial and start again, and again, and again.”
Read Emily Bick's interview with Phil Geraldi in full in The Wire 479/480. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital library.
