CD version. Welcome to All the Pleasures is a work by Chris Shields, Ed Atkins, and Magnus Kaslov, performed and recorded at KoncertKirken in Copenhagen on December 14, 2024, as part of the Organ Sound Art Festival. Shields performs the organ, Atkins the voice, and Kaslov records. The work excavates the interior of the organ, attending to its smaller physical behaviors: air leaking through pipes, mechanical hesitation, pressure, and the gradual alteration of overtones. The enormous instrument is reduced to a table of delicate activity, the sonic focus morphing through the limbs of the organ.
Sarah Davachi, who attended the premiere and provides the liner notes, writes: “It is worth noting that in its orchestration of voice and organ, there is a profound subversion of ostensible expectations. Neither instrument appears in its typical form as continuous pillars of regular sound. Instead, the two form a continuity of subtlety as an interchanging unit.” She continues: “What I admire so deeply about this piece is the sheer candour and poetics of the mechanics on display throughout: an articulation-as-expression almost entirely removed from the traditional musical conventions retained by even the most ardent minimalists, and presented in one of the most considered and moving ways I can imagine.”
The original performance was presented within the church as both a musical work and installation, with a multichannel setup taking advantage of the architecture and acoustics. Welcome to All the Pleasures is presented here as a stereo document of that performance, mixed and mastered by Sean McCann. Glass mastered CD in gatefold sleeve, with a 12-page booklet with photographs and liner notes by Sarah Davachi. Edition of 200 copies.
Chris Shields is a composer and scientist living in Copenhagen. He works for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and records music alone and with others. Shields is the founder and editor of Fool Tide, a periodical newspaper. Magnus Kaslov is a curator of contemporary art at SMK, National Gallery of Denmark. He often works with performance and sound-based practices and is currently curating a three-year project at SMK Thy while writing a PhD on sound in Danish art from the late 1940s to around 1990. Ed Atkins is a British artist living in Copenhagen. Last year he presented a mid-career retrospective at Tate Britain in London, and released an anti-memoir, Flower, via Fitzcarraldo Editions. He is Professor of Text, Media & Entwurf at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
