Unmapping the Distance Keeps Getting Closer
Album out now on 12k
Taking It Apart
Solo art exhibition open through October 18th at Delight Factory
Delight Factory
303 Saratoga Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11233
Some text from the gallery page:
Ezekiel Honig’s visual art is influenced by equal parts abstraction, minimalism, constructivism, the sounds of everyday life, and his background in instrumental music production. Using acrylic paint, encaustic, and a variety of everyday mediums (paper, cotton, cardboard, metal…) on wood and canvas, he is interested in tone and ambiguity, and how the arrangement of space or a seemingly tame image can elicit a visceral reaction. The angle of a line, the smudge of a color, the breaking down of a material - tiny movements that can open up large worlds of perception drive ideas and communication into an object.
The show contains sixteen pieces - some from as far back as 2014 and some from as recent as a week ago, exhibiting a range of work and influences.
Falling Close to Memory is the culmination of a long-distance collaboration between Ezekiel Honig (in New York City) and Trevor De Nogla (in Co.Kerry, Ireland). De Nogla's vocals and Honig's soundtracks fit together in the most natural of ways, obscuring the fact that this is their first time working together. Though Honig has used the human voice in the past, he has never leaned this far into tracks that feature vocals/lyrics and De Nogla has sensibilities and a voice that fit perfectly in this textured, heartfelt sound environment. Using elements from ambient, techno, downtempo, house, dub, and mostly the margins in-between, Falling Close to Memory is imbued with a balance of modernizing old directions while further grounding sound design tendencies that are already tethered to the daily world around us.
The rhythm of a crowded market complements synth-like horns and bassy, muted kickdrums. Rolling percussion bumps, stutters, and shakes around vocal fragments before a piano sways gently through carefully delivered phrases. Shuffly, maraca-laced rhythms transition to luscious, layered vocals that work it out with sombre, sustained, saturated trumpets. While eschewing traditional song structure, the voice is embraced on its own terms - both in the writing and the production - intuitively creating space for introspection and ambiguity.
Object Music is a fluid relationship between sound and visual, a feedback loop between physical object and digital file. Though the musical tracks stand on their own, they are nonetheless a piece of a puzzle, the sonic distillation of visual work that shares a common origin. Each version of Object Music is created out of a small selection of seemingly mundane items; paper, a coin, an aluminum tin, or a piece of cork are a few examples. The objects chosen for each track are the only sound sources used, and these objects are then turned into a collage as a visual counterpart and complement to the sound. The Object Music EP collects the four current audio pieces in this series, all following the same constraints of the project. More info and images at Object Music
An Antique of Paper & Distance combines muted, beat-oriented tracks with single-instrument pieces that straddle the lines of cinema and the living room. In contrast to past work, where Honig can cement in city life and its accompanying sounds, this release feels more scaled down to barer elements while remaining consistent with his embrace of the tactile nature of the sound sources and the beauty of things that degrade gracefully over time.
In the saturated piano of "An Unfamiliar Reminder" fragile tones are bent in and out, exhibiting their pliability through stutters and skips while gracefully turning from one phrase into another. An almost lyrical quality weaves through, using occasional repetition that is structured by its own instinctual logic.
"Wherever You Go There You Are" takes tuned kick drums, distant voices, blocky peripheral percussion, and processed melodies to balance downtempo dancefloor influences with a firm footing in still-home ambient.
On "Antique Paper" murky kick-and-clap, dub-break-esque rhythms dance around stretched, warm, looming chords, ebbing and flowing in a space of texture
and thought.
Rounding out the EP, "and Sometimes It Closes" uses subtly effected cello, maneuvering through a tender orchestra of one inside modern, electronic sensibilities. Staid and introspective it concludes with an ear for the past and an opening for the recent future.
