Scheduled March 2019
Active since at least 1991, Blake Edwards' main project Vertonen has traversed many different roads. What I'll touch on here, firstly, would be his arrangements for various field recordings of factory/industrial landscapes titled Fait a la Machine. I should add, that Edwards not only tracked down the various field recordings, at times getting permission from staff on site, but he also speaks French, so don't mess with it. I should also add, that I think it's okay for me to say that he's an English teacher, so apologies in advance for any errors on my part... as they are surely my fault.
While it would be a disservice if I didn't point out Vertonen's epic sense of long, sprawling ambient tundras that heave themselves into swirling mechanical feeding frenzies, or sometimes just dissipate into dust, I'd have to highlight a few of my favorites being a bit of the earlier works; The split LP with Nautical Almanac, Return of the Interrobang, Deteriorated Broadcast, The Split LP with 16 Bitch Pile Up, and some others that have a humble, yet ambitious feel to them, in the sense that they are often in the classic "everything but the kitchen sink" vein, but have a precision that only a pioneer could foster for that long--keeping us guessing. Maybe it's simultaneously light-hearted, but also buttressed with the feeling that you're in good hands. And even with the more ambient works, they are sometimes accompanied with deeply conceptual overtones, forgotten languages, and laborious symbolism, sometimes almost convivial in their ambiguity, and are dadaist the sense that they sometimes harken back to a more mathematical/serialist approach to noise music that is basically long-forgotten- a complete lack of the mythical fervor than many of us try to achieve with symbolic tropes or emotional diadems. I would also be remiss to exclude the fact that Vertonen is quite fond of loops. He's worked with locked grooves, real-time vinyl damage, and extracted numerous looper-cauldrons on extremely limited CDR from Robert Turman, Velvet Underground, Lana del Rey, and his live sets did include at one time tape recordings of machine sounds, harsh noise, synthesizers, and Lady Gaga.
As a label head, Edwards ran the CIP label for an apparent 25 years, releasing intimate and integrity-driven large-run media with the likes of Wolf Eyes, Z'ev, Chop Shop, Joe Colley, Hafler Trio, Skozey Fetisch, Hans Grusel, and many others. In place of CIP is now a smaller run label Ballast in its stead, focusing on more intimate listener settings.
http://nopartofit.blogspot.com/2020/07/interview-series-17-blake-edwards.html
