Independent Project Records’ expanded reissue campaign for A Produce’s back catalog continues with the artist’s third ambient/’trance’ album, Land of a Thousand Trances. Originally released in 1994 as an eight-song album and expanded in 2007 to 18 tracks spread over two discs, this edition adds new liner notes, updated artwork (including some of the late artist’s own photography), and IPR’s signature oversized hand letterpress-printed CD packaging. It’s been freshly remastered by Third Man Mastering’s Warren DeFever (His Name Is Alive).
The late Barry Craig (A Produce) accompanied Land of a Thousand Trances with a press release that outlined the fundamental elements of what he liked to call trance music. “It can be as driving as the sound of world beat rhythms against modern day electronics,” he wrote, “or as subtle as the tinkling of Japanese bells mixed with background environmental sounds. Whatever the vehicle, the fundamental requirement of any style of trance music is that it sets up a rhythm (percussion), a sustained sound (drone), or a repetitive figure that over time, evokes a spellbinding hold on the listener, gradually drawing them deeper into the music, or trance.” Transcendental at heart, A Produce’s trance language encompasses ambient, industrial, new age and so-called world music, only to go further. It is eager to find a direct line from Gregorian chants to Erik Satie, while tending to the needs of a fractured postmodern world. It is also properly psychedelic. There is certainly a parallel to be drawn between A Produce’s work here and that of some of his guiding lights: Terry Riley, Steve Roach, Robert Rich, Harold Budd, Jon Hassell… But it is also true that the voracious, multitudinous nature of the perfectly titled Land of a Thousand Trances feels unprecedented and idiosyncratic. It could be seen as reflective of Craig’s relationship with his city — Los Angeles, a crucial muse since the post-punk days of his former band Afterimage. What he most loved about it was the simultaneous proximity of deserts, oceans, mountains, and industrial metropolis.
FCC CLEAN
Label: Indepedent Project Records
Goes For Adds 8/8
