C. Spencer Yeh
C. Spencer Yeh (b. 1975, Taipei, Taiwan) works in and in between the realms of composition, experimental music, film, and visual arts, both as a practitioner and a curator of events and artistic collaborations. As a former student of radio/television/film at Northwestern University, Yeh seeks and probes instances in which the sonic (or vocal) and visual (or tangible) intersect in both typical and unexpected ways.
C. Spencer Yeh (b. 1975, Taipei, Taiwan) works in and in between the realms of composition, experimental music, film, and visual arts, both as a practitioner and a curator of events and artistic collaborations. As a former student of radio/television/film at Northwestern University, Yeh seeks and probes instances in which the sonic (or vocal) and visual (or tangible) intersect in both typical and unexpected ways.
Songs 2002
Double A sided cassette reissue of a severely limited one-sided LP, and what might be C Spencer Yeh's most trying, challenging and rewarding foray into a world previously unknown to him, and us: his world of song. Songs 2002 contain what are perhaps subtle homages to early Eno and primo era Bowie vis a vis the studio treatments of the raw sounds with which we're more familiar in his previous work. Yeh's songs work within two generalized veins: ala Brian Eno's early attempts to communicate liquid…
Live At Kathy's B-Day
Numbered edition of 200.John Olson (Wolf Eyes, American Tapes, etc..) and Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) live.
Self Titled
Last Copies ** Edition of 150, handmade ‘action painting’ artwork, each copy is unique** 8mm Records is proud to announce the debut album by the mind bender trio of Tashi Dorji (Guitar), C.Spencer Yeh (Violin) and Michael Zerang (Drums). Exploring a vast array of music influences (from almost ‘oriental’ vibes to radical free improvisation, from free jazz to musique concrète) the trio produces an incredible sound, wild and communicative in equal measures. An amazing listening experience, with ple…
The RCA Mark II
C Spencer Yeh presents an album of electro-acoustic music made on the legendary but defunct RCA Mark II modular synth - nicknamed ‘Victor’ - at Columbia Uni. An ingenious concept, captivatingly executed. “The RCA Mark II is a follow-up to Yeh’s recent vocal work and is focused solely on the non-musical operation of the famed RCA Mark II synthesizer. Built and installed in 1959 at Columbia University, it was the first programmable synthesizer and became the bedrock upon which the Columbia-Princet…
Solo Voice I - X
Solo Voice I – X is the first LP by C Spencer Yeh devoted entirely to the voice. Yeh’s practice has its most obvious precedents in the sound poetry scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s—recalling an outlier group like the Four Horsemen, at their most raw and a-verbal, as much as the circles and canons forged around post-Lettrist France—as well as in figures like Joan La Barbara.
Over the past few years, he has moved from virtuosic, intensely physical performances to more focused studies whose specifi…
Cold/Burn
Superstar live drone fiesta time here. Recorded in Oslo, during an Aurora Borealic night of January, 2010, this beauty thrums with a majesty-vibe arising deep from within the earth. Each of the participants has been horn-blown around the globe for mastery of individual string/machine attack. C. Spencer Yeh's violin arcs have powered a million strange improv scenes. Jon Wesseltoft is clearly the king of Norwegian harmonium dudes. Okkyung Lee is a Korean polymath re: formal cello innovations, …
Wake Up Awesome
The second chapter of SStudios (Software Studio Series). SStudios is a new venture in the Software Recording Co.'s expanding catalog that invites artists in the field of electronic music to create collaborative works of quality and vision. Inspired by the historical intersections of live performance and studio post-production, Wake Up Awesome is a modern kind of fusion in technique as well as genre. At its core are three artists highly experienced with both instant and labored composition.…
Ncat
Nate Wooley, trumpet, amplifier. C. Spencer Yeh, violin, voice. Audrey Chen, cello, voice, electronics. Todd Carter, piano, electronics, edit. Blurring the lines between electronic and acoustic music, as well as composition versus improvisation, NCAT is an unique quartet consisting of an improvising trio whose music has been mutated and structured in post-production by its fourth member. The bulk of the musical material on this LP was recording at Steim in Amsterdam, during a residency of …
Transitions
Having rattled the hinges with last year’s “In the Blink of an Eye†7-inch, C S Yeh (C. Spencer Yeh) flings open the door and steps inside with Transitions, his first full-length album of songs after years of establishing himself as one of Earth’s top humans in experimental music and unbound improvisation, both alone and in collaboration, on record and onstage. The effect Transitions has on you may or may not depend on your familiarity with Yeh’s past work; regard…
Ambient
Ambient describes something that imperceptibly pervades the environment to the point of barely existing. It affects us, but we might not know it. It controls what we regard as the most basic qualities of our lives, so basic that we consider them inconsequential, everyday, and normal. The earliest ambient music was likened to furniture. This is not ambient music. But there are the qualities of ambient music here. The sounds surround and envelop. Groundwork is laid for assumptions and choices to b…
Northern Resonance I
In the winter of 2008 C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) and Jon Wesseltoft (Tongues of Mount Meru, Maranata) would meet in Wesseltoft's native Norway to record the tracks, which comprise this tape. With Yeh on violin and Wesseltoft on harmonium the duo blazes through the northern sky unleashing a meditative eulogy to the Nordic gods of past, present and future. The reeds maintain the momentum while the strings wail in unison. Fans of Tony Conrad and Henry Flynt take note. Artwork by L…
1975
Intransitive Recordings is extra-proud to present 1975, the debut solo album of tightly-coiled, crackling electronic ambience by C. Spencer Yeh. While “debut” may seem a strange word to use to describe an album by a guy with such a deep discography, Yeh explains that 1975 is like nothing anyone has heard from him before. “One thing is I really wanted to focus on a certain feeling of stasis. So much of what else I do just kinda pushes and pushes forward. 1975 is more vertical than horizontal,…
The Seven Storey Mountain
Brilliant second album from Nate Wooley's Seven Storey Mountain project. David Grubbs and Paul Lytton have been replaced by Chris Corsano and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core, New Monuments).
"This second recording of Seven Storey Mountain is what I hoped the series would be, a chance to try to find different ways of creating something over the same basic ideas (tape manipulation, long forms with simple written musical directions, an attempt to reach some sort of musical ecstaticism) with diffe…
In The Blink Of An Eye
C S Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan, repped Cincinnati for many many years and is now based in Brooklyn, New York. Musically, Yeh is monolithically active both as a solo artist and improviser as well as with Burning Star Core. He has made seemingly hundreds of recordings, and we've yet to find one rotten egg in the basket. Yeh has collaborated with an insanely varied list of people. If we were to actually drop these names, you'd be impressed / confused. But you have NOT heard the result of him wr…
Northern Resonance III-II5
Yeh and Wesseltoft met in Oslo, Norway, in the cold winter of 2008. Within the combination between the highly dynamic peaks of Spencer'€™s violin and the warm, eternal continuum produced by Jon'€™s harmonium, they found the key to deliver a flux of epic, organic drones that sound like nothing they have recorded before. Two years later (february 2010), they did it again, same room, same set-up, same magic. The best takes from those sessions are on the two sides of this Lp. This…
The Squid
Dilloway & Yeh recorded live to 4-track cassette Summer 2006 in Ann Arbor. Yeh on violin, Dilloway on Tape loops of Yeh's Violin. Originally released on LP, this Digipak CD version includes a bonus track collage of the 3 tracks from the duo's out of print FALSE SPEECH cassette.
Compound
The cooperative of composer/improvisers John Wiese (Sissy Spacek) and C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) presents in a terrific session recorded in August 26, 2007 at The Compound, San Francisco. The work reveals further unexpected developments and strategies of this ongoing partnership. Familiar machineries were primed, but an increasingly alien attitude was fed through and processed into churning and bewildering shapes.
Musculus Trapezius
An epic performance captured pristine, unfurling its massive limbs patiently and cannily over the course of seventy-plus minutes. Conrad mingles amongst his trusted wood-and-steel sidekicks, engaged in both age-old conversations and inspired new inquisitions; Yeh bookends his passive/aggressive behaviour on violin with spare piano incantations; Duchs acts as a ghostly anchor, casting formidable binding and deft velocity. Yes, the drones do flow freely, but these reliable horizons fracture into s…
Tiny Red Tables b/w Big American Hole
Last copy available "at one point during the free noise tour evan parker pulled out a little black notebook and read back to us all the names of weird bands we'd been discussing. really funny / embarrassing coming from the mouth of e.p.we played at this one club that had all of these tall red tables with tiny circle tops. e.p. said that our new unit should be called "tiny red tables", but later he was talking about some 7" and said, "you know, with the big american hole" ... so we decided that w…
Solo Voice & Electronics: Memories Of Murder / Always Been A Sto
Massive double album from C. Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core that mops up two years’ (2007-2008) worth of vocal experiments, running from acoustic throat-splurges and hysterical ticker-tape tirades through the sound of breath caressing microphones and physically impossible computer edited body extensions. The whole deal comes with liner notes from Yeh documenting the various strategies and set-ups, connecting sound poetry and 20th century avant garde techniques with current psych/noise practice…