Presenting for the first time as Society for the Investigation, Los Angeles producer and performance artist Alan Tollefson explores new depths with his dark ambient album Ectoplasmic Field Recordings Parts 1-6.
Tollefson’s Ectoplasmic Field Recordings Parts 1-6 is a meditation on “the endless space in which phantoms move forward” (from words scrawled on a painting by Jean-Michael Basquiat). “In the last year of the global pandemic, we’ve faced horror after horror. While having to simultaneously stare into the void of our existential crisis and into the heart of the surveillance state through endless zoom meetings, we’ve come to a crossroad in the reckoning of our national consciousness. Ectoplasmic…is critical of our enlightened tendencies to believe our rational sensibilities will save us from the chaos wrought by our capitalist, racist forebearers,” Tollefson said. The work is influenced by Morton Subotnick, Aphex Twin, Chelsea Wolfe, Kristian Hayter, Diamanda Galas, Merzbow, and David Lynch.
In addition to his musical explorations, Tollefson has ventured down a variety of creative paths. For more than 30 years he has worked in theater as a properties master, master carpenter, scenic designer, and, currently, as a technical director in the Los Angeles area, where he also performs and teaches college-level stagecraft, performance art, and experimental theater. He recently signed to Rum Fixion Records, an Australian based independent record label for strange, dark sound stories.
The moniker Society for the Investigation is a nod to the crypto-zoologist and author Ivan T. Sanderson, whom the artist met when he was seven. Sanderson founded The Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained to investigate UFOs, Bigfoot, Yeti, and other unexplained phenomenon.
credits
released May 15, 2021
Written, recording, mixed and mastered by Alan Tollefson, 2021.
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