Phosphenes & Allegories, by Stephen Becker

Phosphenes & Allegories

by Stephen Becker

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Cassette + Digital Album
Limited edition cassette of Stephen Becker's new cassette, Phosphenes & Allegories, which is the 57th release on Atlantic Rhythms.

Includes unlimited streaming of Phosphenes & Allegories via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	I (Beginnings) 00:46	buy track
2.	II (Daydream Heroics) 02:47	buy track
3.	III 01:12	buy track
4.	IV (Imagined Country) 02:06	buy track
5.	V 00:58	buy track
6.	VI (Mahler 5 Adagietto [excerpt]) 01:45	buy track
7.	VII (Verbal Pat on the Shoulder) 01:20	buy track
8.	VIII (Five Spot Discovery) 02:44	buy track
9.	IX 00:38	buy track
10.	X (Air Brush) 01:26	buy track
11.	XI 01:20	buy track
12.	XII (Little Church) 02:24	buy track
13.	XIII (I-80 Avant-Garde) 01:55	buy track
14.	XIV 01:40	buy track
15.	XV (Cereology) 01:25	buy track
16.	XVI 01:04	buy track
17.	XVII (BWV 995 Sarabande) 02:03	buy track
18.	XVIII 01:15	buy track
19.	XIX (Endings) 01:48	buy track

about

Brooklyn-based artist Stephen Becker conceived his latest, Phosphenes & Allegories, as a soundtrack to “a silent film that continues to be watched and interpreted by new people in new ways.” And as soundtracks go, Phosphenes & Allegories presents a range of emotions, ambiguities, questions, and soundscapes all united by Becker’s distinctive guitar levitating within. “I’ve mainly worked as a songwriter until this release,” he explains, “so I’ve long craved breaking away from that world and making something purely instrumental.”

Phosphenes & Allegories remained a private set of bedroom experiments for some time. As the quarantine in 2020 began, Becker needed a creative outlet and so pulled out his Tascam 4-track to begin documenting blurry fragments as a kind of time capsule. “I was also watching a lot of art films and reading a lot of science fiction,” he says. “There was something about the quiet intensity of filmmakers like Bergman and Haneke, and the shadowy alien landscapes in books like Dune and Left Hand of Darkness, that I wanted to express through the guitar.”

As the Phosphenes & Allegories sharpened in focus, a cohesiveness emerged. “Things became more clear when I started to incorporate drum machines and synths.” he says. “As I went further, I found myself making contact with other influences: the fluidity of Morton Feldman, the serenity of Aphex Twin, the romanticism of Joao Gilberto, the melodic integrity of Thelonious Monk.”

Becker began tweaking and tinkering with his own recording process to focus on chance and improvisation. “This is the first time I’ve made an album this way,” Becker explains. “Both this process and the location had a huge impact on the music itself. I was excited to take an approach that wasn’t as calculated and drawn-out as my song-based albums.”

Phosphenes & Allegories oozes with a cinematic warmth. In many ways, that warmth harkens back to Becker’s first encounters with improvisation and “the idea of abandoning it all, creating one’s own language, letting the music flow outward with no required context,” Becker says. “In making Phosphenes & Allegories, I wanted to reconnect with my former self and my former interests in instrumental music, jazz, and improvisation.”

credits

released October 20, 2023

Performed and mixed by Stephen Becker
Mastered by Eli Crews
All pieces by Stephen Becker except Tracks 6 (Mahler), 12 (Hermeto Pascoal), 17 (Bach)

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Stephen Becker Brooklyn, New York

stephen with a ph

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May 9

The Sultan Room

Brooklyn, NY

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