Voices by David Grubbs, Magorzata Penkalla and Pete Simonelli, guitars by David Grubbs and Miron Grzegorkiewicz, organ and violin by David Maranha, Text excerpted from Vanishing Point: How to Disappear in America without a Trace Music by David Grubbs, Miron Grzegorkiewicz, David Maranha, Gosia Penkalla, Pete Simonelli
Three takes on America - three journeys and three documents. Written and recorded.
Year 1939, John A. Lomax and Ruby T. Lomax in their Plymouth - going South. 6502 miles, tons of audio recordings and a diary where report on the voices of South and voices of South become barely distinguishable.
Year 1949, Harry Partch - leaving for Gualala. Old smithy on a cliff, an isolated recording studio, breeding of a troop of small creatures called "Eleven Intrusions" - perhaps one of the frst cosmopolitan reinventions of American native music.
Finally, just recently, an anonymous hunt for vanishing - say north of Highway 15 and West of Baker. Online manual.
All three documents were approached by musicians who met in Warsaw for Playback Play 2012 - a week long series of rehearsals and performances.
And then put together to form - what exactly? A historiosophical narrative in music arrangements? A distant mirage of something we have already heard somewhere? Three images of America facing each other?