In The Perfect Discourse, Hermes Trismegistus and Asclepius discuss the imbuing of inanimate statues with the living power of a soul: “statues ensouled and conscious, filled with spirit and doing great deeds; statues that foreknow the future and predict it by lots, by prophecy, by dreams and by many other means; statues that make people ill and cure them, bringing them pain and pleasure as each deserves.” The frozen form of a statue still might contain a vibrancy, an energy directed by intention, which can elicit movement, both mental and physical, in those within its perceptual sphere. This very LP may well transmit a contradiction: a living moment from the past, a communique from isolation, that may yet reach others by oblique means.
Theoxenia is a solo excursion for Dave Shuford, exploratory lifer and member of, among many others, No Neck Blues Band, Rhyton, and D. Charles Speer & the Helix. Two years on from its modest digital debut, (Adventures in) Stasis arrives in its physical form, a codex glinting at a specific recency that draws upon the promontory of an even earlier time. These pieces are built on repetitions: of behavior, brief phrases, reiterated modal forms, periodic routines of the household. In even static positions, dynamic cycles emerge. The heart surges forward in a moment of enthusiasm, with a slight rhythmic variant in the music being the gateway. The sources of these sounds align with those from the excellent Arghiledes LP (Thrill Jockey), a release also in thrall to rembetika and dub influences.
Buried within the tracks, one can glean a tribute to the Queen of the Beatniks and scattered fragments stolen from a masterpiece of Lemonopoulos. Recurrent synthetic belchings and basic manual repeats, such are the limited choices available at any given moment to the performer. To roll with the lumbering flow or push against, the path of conjoined adherence is most often taken. Blind overdubs reveal monomaniacal insistence on aleatoric overlay, a nod to the Hagerty school of studio practice. A wander into the void is taken. Adventure remains an encounter with risk. Is it a place to journey to? A process in action? In this case, it may simply be a frequency, timbre, or figure that conjures another place or time, situated between recollection and prognostication, imagination and perception. In the end, with the mind and body both cast out unto a vast space, a singular expression remains: here is (Adventures in) Stasis, the first Theoxenia LP.
