Ten years after his debut CD, Stone Blind (Intransitive, 1997), Howard Stelzer presents Bond Inlets, his first widely available solo cassette-tape composition. Stelzer, a Boston-based composer and sound artist, was never happy with his previous album and threw away most of the pressing as soon as it returned from the factory. He took the occasion of his label’s tenth anniversary to dissect the source sounds of that work and filter it through the lens of the interceding decade in order to build a piece that more accurately reflects what his intentions were then, and what his aesthetic is today. Bond Inlets is a subtly emotional work of foreground drone that beats its head against the plastic walls of cassette-tape technology, laying bare the physicality of the process of its creation. The dying motors of ancient cassette players, tape-saturated percussion, and blown-out condenser-mic wail are mixed with elements of live tape improvisations and surreptitious field recordings taken in Stelzer’s neighborhood to create deep chasms of no-fidelity murk and evocative hiss. There is an implacable melancholy to Bond Inlets, with fragments of distant melodies that surface briefly only to be subsumed again into the grime. $12ppd US $14ppd world Praise for Bond Inlets: "The two pieces on Bond Inlets are all about flow. Long, slow, and deep, they're the sonic equivalent of a mudslide carrying a town downhill. Hints of the original sources ooze in and out of the mix... all fleeting, all mere flecks in a thick, writhing field of hiss, wow and flutter. It's noise with the edges scoured off, or a beach after storms carry the sand away, at once still and utterly blasted." - The Wire "Windswept, with an eerie quasi-melody punctuated by squeaking wheels, jumbled sounds, and occasional seismic blasts of bass. The pace and focus on the struggling mechanisms of tape and player combine to evoke a fine feeling of rueful mortality." - Signal to Noise "... a full wall of sound, with small events happening on all levels. A great work this one that shows a much more mature composer and one that has been constant refining his work over the last decade to cook up this masterpiece." - Vital Weekly "(Stelzer's) current music centers on prolonged, slow development and subtle shifts in tonal color, texture, and volume. Where he once unleashed flurries of sharp, quick explosions, he now favors slower burns and gradual decay." - The Boston Phoenix "Sounds like a voracious cassette player devouring an entire music catalog... at times the tape elements are so processed that they resemble black metal guitar riffs, which makes perverse sense. Bond Inlets is a fascinating disc that has both strong compositional elements as well as a lot of chance, chaotic noise explosions that work extremely well together." - Brainwashed "Excellent reworking of some material from 10 years past, rich, immersive piece with drama and detail aplenty. Hear this." - Brian Olewnick "The piece is a veritable study in creaking morass; on par with the venerable crackle of The New Blockaders, as dense as the best David Jackman / Organum materials and one of (Stelzer)’s finest recorded moments. Highly recommended!!!" - Keith Fullerton Whitman, Mimaroglu Music Sales "... a large expanded dread. Like walking into a cave the further you go in to Bond Inlets the more the darkness spreads and impenetrable it may seem. But there is a calm to this material that never moves into predictable explosions of noise. This is my favorite stuff by Stelzer yet." - The Fader "Industrial drones & washed-out blurry air compacted & morphed into mud mountains." - Angela Sawyer, Wierdo "De Christian Marclay à eRikm, l’art minoritaire du « platinisme » est maintenant largement reconnu dans les musiques expérimentales. En sera-t-il de même pour la manipulation de cassettes audio ? Howard Stelzer nous oblige ici à nous poser la question. Un des rarissimes adeptes de cette pratique autant atypique que confidentielle, il se positionne en virtuose du genre et démontre avec brio que le caractère limité, désuet et altérable de ce support peut aussi être une contrainte génératrice de créativité. Avec cet album, il nous donne un aperçu de son remarquable travail." - Octopus