Buy Vinyl and Listen Here
Grammy nominated Patrick Gleeson, 18th Century English literature PHD professor turned Master Synthesist of Apocalypse Now and Herbie Hancock’s legendary Mwandishi septet FOUREVER is a 4 song 33 minute, 33 and 1/3 second album exploring the edge of minimalist jazz in quadraphonic sound.
The 86-copy limited edition version of FOUREVER commemorates Gleeson's 86-years alive and includes quadraphonic vinyl, a career retrospective large-format book co-published by IN-FO.CO called FOREVER Ago and two CDs featuring a catalog of Gleeson’s past work including collaborations with Herbie Hancock, Jim Lang, Bennie Maupin, and the prolific avantgarde visual artist Bruce Conner whose pen & ink drawing adorns the FOUREVER album cover. A cement-encased version with an impression of Gleeson’s handprints will also be available at select Los Angeles retailers. All versions of the release are encoded using dublab’s Quadraphonic Universally Accessible Resource Kit (QUARK). QUARK enables semi-binaural via standard 2-channel listening or 4-speaker listening via Involve Audio hardware decoders, vintage Regular Matrix quadraphonic receivers, Dolby Pro-Logic II receivers, or any multi-channel audio interface equipped computer. FOUREVER is immersive via all formats: digital download, streaming (Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, etc), radio broadcast, vinyl and high-resolution Dolby Atmos (Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon HD). The specially formulated quadraphonic vinyl was pressed and one-step plated at RTI using a one-step process featuring Neotech’s low surface noise, semi-transparent VR900 compound.
Pioneering non-profit internet radio station dublab commemorates over two decades of history with decades ( in space ), an album of 10 songs by 20 artists on quadraphonic vinyl. The limited edition album conceptualizes connective space of all kinds and includes a “make space” kit with a chair for the purchaser to assemble out of the album packaging designed by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory UX Designer Marijke Jorritsma, Experience Designer Daniel Perlin, Architectural Designer John Vieweg & Arts Technologist KamranV, who is also album’s producer. The face of the chair has a personal, custom galaxy print which may also be claimed and viewed at http://hear.space
The music production reflects the impact of dublab’s space-making through its community-generated radio. The “10 by 20” concept itself stems from dublab’s pre-pandemic celebration of its 20th anniversary and simultaneous 10th anniversary of Echo Park music studio Bedrock.LA; with each institution having a vast overlap of artists sharing both spaces over the collective decades. The decades artists, many of whom had never previously recorded together, are connected through dublab’s consistent cultivation of global experimentation; most have never previously worked in spacial sound.
decades ( in space ) is a non-profit project supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts with artists donating works with all proceeds benefiting dublab.
Quadraphonic collaborations include:
-Emily Kokal (Warpaint) + Suzanne Ciani
-Shruti Kumar + The Koreatown Oddity
-Dntel (The Postal Service) + Mia Doi Todd
-Laura Escudé + Sudan Archives
-Alex Lilly + Kolars
-Drum & Lace + Jeff Parker (Tortoise)
-Randy Randall (No Age) + Flula Borg (The Suicide Squad)
-Beatie Wolfe + Laraaji & Arji OceAnanda
-Jeremiah Chiu + Sam Prekop (The Sea and Cake)
-Daedelus + Molly Lewis (World Champion Whistler)
Mastering icon Bernie Grundman cut this first ever all-analog live quadraphonic direct-to-disc recording with Alex Lilly at his facility in Hollywood, CA just before the 2019 Making Vinyl conference where he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Originally a gift for attendees, these discs were swiftly cut and pressed in less than a week with the support of Making Vinyl, Rainbo Records, NiPro Optics, PHONOCUT, CyKiK and Bernie Grundman Mastering.
Press: Mix
Make Music in Space (MMS) is a national call for submissions to develop immersive quadraphonic work utilizing QUARK.
The beta is AVAILABLE NOW. Please submit your email to download.
We develops the Quadraphonic Universally Accessible Resource Kit (QUARK) as freely available software tool to meet the expanding need for musicians and engineers to develop new spatial audio work in existing and emerging technology without a large financial investment. The QUARK software plugin is used in Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) and similar platforms to encode four channels of discrete audio into two channels (standard stereo) audio then back four channels again, allowing the distribution of four-channel spatial recordings via widely accessible two-channel formats such as vinyl, radio, streaming video such as YouTube and music services such as iTunes and Spotify.
QUARK enables musicians, filmmakers and engineers to make spatial sound work via two channel distribution formats in the Regular Matrix format then monitor audio at the pre-encode, encode and decode phases so that these creatives may mix and master spatial sound work for distribution.
In order for listeners to enjoy the decoded four-channel music, we are also developing software for use in consumer products such as wi-fi speakers, audio playback equipment and similar products to allow listeners to easily experience quadraphonic spatial sound for zero in licensing costs to the manufacturers, thus allowing creators a massive potential audience.
SOLD OUT. There are limited copies available for in-person sales at Ace Hotel locations (including Ace Hotel London).
The price of these 227 rare, numbered packages was $227 (inspired by the Buchla 227e quad output module that Suzanne uses for spatial control on the record) plus origin-based tax/shipping.
To see what’s inside, please check out Techmoan’s video. For more info on the release, check out WIRED, Pro Sound News, Synthèse Montréal, listen to dublab: in conversation, the Digital Music News podcast and The Vinyl Guide podcasts.
Thank you so much for your interest in the rare item. There were only 227 available, numbered. Many were available at CyKiK.com directly, some at special events and some were available via select record stores such as Ace Hotel (see Ace Blog interview with Suzanne by Julianna Barwick too), Third Man Records and the LACMA Store. For pre-orders we took special requests on specific numbers.
This is a live recording that was performed by Suzanne Ciani in San Francisco on March 5, 2016. It was Suzanne's first solo Buchla performance in 40 years and was played on a Buchla 200e System. As all of Suzanne's Buchla performances, the performance was quadraphonic. Suzanne has since toured the world, exclusively in Quad.
The release of this 180g vinyl disc is also quadraphonic and includes a hardware decoder manufactured with Involve Audio to decode two channels of audio from the vinyl disc back to the four-channel recording with stunning results. We're very excited to share it with you and hope that it will inspire you to compose in spatial sound.