Imperial Valley, IV, by Imperial Valley

Imperial Valley, IV

by Imperial Valley

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ES Narratives of erosion. A demise of forms cast against the abrasive metals of progress. Sombre drones rumble beneath clouds of dust and ruin. Amidst this desolation rise and fall the corrosive melodies of force against substance. Of expression suffocated by oppression.

These compositions, these recordings, by Imperial Valley hold the listener like the distant gazes of lives drowned in sepia, lost among discarded dreams. Here those lives are resurrected - excavated in sound - to live once more.

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Full Digital Discography

Get all 4 Folded Time releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Imperial Valley, IV, Imperial Valley, I, Imperial Valley, II, and Imperial Valley, III. , and , .

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Collector's Edition (FT/002)
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
- An artist-made seal-embossed folder with a paste-on coverplate
- Three artist-made printed CDRs comprising the albums Imperial Valley I, II and IV
- Three manilla CDR sleeves with unique paste-on cover art
- A download card for the exclusive recording:
'Remote etheric dowsing, Superstition Mountain, Mar 20, 2024'
- Seven A4 laser prints from the Folded Time archive
- Three 9x13cm inkjet prints from the Folded Time archive
- Five typewritten excerpts from Depression-era texts
- An initialled, numbered and hand-stamped colophon
- Edition of nine

Includes unlimited streaming of Imperial Valley, IV via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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‘This machine and power age’ 38:54

about

Imperial Valley, IV is the fourth in Richard Skelton’s ‘projective ethnography’ series of ‘imaginal field recordings’ for Depression-era southern California. Recorded under his CF Moore/ Imperial Valley pseudonym, these unique soundworks were created with archive audio from the period — ranging from public domain tv & radio broadcasts to documentary and oral history records. This found material was extensively reworked and manipulated before being blended with contemporary acoustic instrumentation to create a richly layered aggregate of ‘folded time’. Imperial Valley, IV veers more towards live acoustic improvisation than its predecessors, but the album’s coda contains excerpts from an early 1940s speech about the importance of democracy in the face of totalitarianism by Congressman Jerry Voorhis. It’s a warning call that resonates across the decades — a warning that is uncomfortably relevant today, given the USA’s current political climate.

Imperial Valley, California, was the site of many labor camps for migrant workers escaping the dust-bowl famines of the 1930s. Some of these camps were documented by photographer Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration. Her 1936 portrait of Florence Owens Thompson at the Nipomo camp in northern California came to symbolize the plight of migrant farmers across the country. Lange’s lesser-known work for the FSA has served as an ongoing inspiration for Skelton — so much so that he terms these recordings ‘auditory nitrates after the work of Dorothea Lange’. Published through Skelton’s Folded Time imprint, the Imperial Valley series has extended into the photographic domain with a collection of ‘revisioned’ Dorothea Lange images.

Printed reproductions of Lange’s work were rephotographed and then superimposed to create ghostly double exposures that evoke the foreboding sense of unease that often permeates the music. These photographs were in turn reprinted using a reprographic machine with an intentionally depleted toner supply to create a prematurely faded monotone appearance. Due to the vagaries of the reproduction process using this method, each print is unique, bearing the various artefacts and defects of the (misused) technology. The result is an assemblage of materials that, for Skelton, emphasises the erasures of time’s passing and the failures of collective memory.

credits

released April 2, 2024

Cover image: "Son-in law of migratory family in Farm Security Administration (FSA) labor camp. Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California" by Dorothea Lange, 1939. LC-USF34-019224-C.

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Folded Time

Sound recording & visual art project of CF Moore.

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Previous albums on Other Forms of Consecrated Life.

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