The Hafler Trio

*500 copies limited edition* After more than four years in the works, I am beyond elated to announce the release of ballastnvp067: The Hafler Trio: If Take, Then Take: Tricks, Half-Tricks & Real Phenomena (2 x CD, DVD, cards, and enamel pin in custom fabricated box). I originally released If Take, Then Take: Tricks, Half-Tricks & Real Phenomena in 2005 as a vinyl record, and it didn’t go off without a hitch or two. (In the end, I played almost every copy prior to sending it to a customer or distributor as a quality check against [maddeningly] inconsistent anomalies.)

My lingering itch: I want to do this release justice. And now, here we are. Certainly, there were challenges along the way—nothing worthwhile is ever without. Files got corrupted. Technology failed. Older, critical programs were inexplicably rejected by their longstanding operating system. Older, critical programs were subsequently rejected by a “newer” (relative) operating system. Experts were called in. Concerns and recommendations voiced. Experts tapped other experts when their equipment didn’t deliver.

Everyone is doing what they can, but, as you surely understand, there can be nothing guaranteed. However. There were also strokes of luck and good fortune sprinkled along the path and, most importantly, Andrew and I had a rapport healthy with levity underlying the entire process.

Without straying too far (or at all, to be honest) into an “all will be revealed” (because it very well may not, nor should it be—let’s continue being honest) trope, I will state this release contains everything I could have hoped for. Hearing the original recordings—which often lean extremely delicate and quiet—in this format is simply a joy, and the second CD and DVD each sweep through a breadth of ideas in ways for which I was not prepared. For which I was pleasantly unprepared, in fact, because one of the pleasures, for me, of the work of the Hafler Trio is misdirection.