Tender Crust

Tip! *2024 stock* Full Spectrum rides again with a very special long player from our “house band,” Tender Crust, with the release of their latest set of recordings – ’Convexity.’ Now a quartet – with the inclusion of bass clarinetist Rebecca Hubsher, alongside returning band members Gretchen Korsmo, Carl Ritger, and Andrew Weathers – the group traveled to the far reaches of northern Colorado to record in the otherworldly acoustics of Rangely’s Tank Center for Sonic Arts. Located on the outskirts of an isolated oil town near the Utah border, The Tank has been a prized recording location for decades thanks to its unique sonic properties. 

Constructed in the 1940s as a railroad water treatment facility, the seven-story steel water tank was relocated to Rangely in the mid-60s for use by a local utility company. It was never put to use, however, as the underlying shale that it was placed upon proved unable to support the weight of the structure when filled. This firmament bowed the tank’s floor into a gentle parabola, thus giving it an extraordinary internal acoustic resonance, capable of generating a lush reverberation of up to 40 seconds. After decades of being used clandestinely by sound artists, The Tank has since been fitted with a proper recording set-up to accurately capture its grandeur.

Recorded in the heat of the desert summer, a logistical element to the recording session that imposed its own physical restrictions on the performers, ‘Convexity’ finds Tender Crust operating in a decidedly acoustic mode, with a variety of woodwinds, small percussion, and voices accompanied by Carl Ritger’s synthesizer work. The material featured on the album sits somewhere between composed and improvised – rough tones and scattered textures blending and morphing within the alien resonance of the space.