Out there in the middle of nowhere

by John Also Bennett

supported by

more...

	/

Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
First edition, limited to 500 copies. Black vinyl.

Includes unlimited streaming of Out there in the middle of nowhere via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 7 days

edition of 500

$20 USD or more
Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$8 USD or more

1.	Nowhere 15:38
2.	Spectral Valley 04:14
3.	Badlands 12:33	buy track
4.	Embrosnerόs 07:48	buy track
5.	Badlands (Instrumental) (Digital Bonus Track) 12:30

about

Experimental musician John Also Bennett’s latest full-length emerged from a bicoastal pandemic road trip through the badlands of South Dakota. Moved by the scale and complexity of the landscape – “remnants of an ancient seafloor mixed with the ash of a volcanic eruption, eroded over millennia and now resembling the tangled folds of earth’s brain” – he sculpted a series of stark, microtonal arrangements using a 1940’s Oahu lap steel guitar, a Yamaha SY77 multi-timbral synthesizer, and field recordings. The following year, upon relocating with his wife (Kranky composer Christina Vantzou) to the cliffside village of Livaniana on the island of Crete, Bennett discovered a method of translating his minimalist lap steel phrases into live MIDI information, which he then used to trigger different waveforms to extend the resonance of the instrument. This multi-layered generative process resulted in a collection as vast and bewildering as the terrain that inspired it: Out there in the middle of nowhere.

Opening with the desolate 15-minute “Nowhere,” Bennett’s playing is both glacial and geological, attuned to “the wonder and absolute emptiness” of the Badlands as “an infinite living sculpture.” Notes stretch, shift, and drift into vistas of twilit silence. Footsteps crunch across dry soil and rocky ravines, beneath skies stretching to the horizon. The use of extreme glissandos conjures a sense of windswept plains and winding canyons, primordial and unpopulated. Even outlier “Spectral Valley” – one of the few nods towards Bennett’s work in progressive kosmische trio Forma – unfolds with patient grandeur, rich swells of electronics gleaming in long golden arcs.

Closing track “Embrosnerόs” (named for the verdant interior Cretan village where it was recorded) best embodies the album’s cinematic liminality, at the axis of barren and beatific. Gestural breaths of lap steel shimmer in sparkling air, with echoes of both the dusty West and some forgotten paradise. Bennett describes its creation as taking place “mostly during sunset hours, blanketed by waves of cicadas as sheep bells twinkled in the distance.” A micro-tuned DX7 radiates in the periphery while the guitar’s strings hang and reverberate like deepening shadows at dusk.

credits

released November 4, 2022

All music composed, performed, recorded, and mixed by John Also Bennett

"Nowhere" and "Badlands" recorded at Les Ateliers Claus (Brussels, Belgium) and in Badlands National Park (South Dakota, USA), "Spectral Valley" recorded at The Schoolhouse (Brooklyn, USA), "Embrosnerós" recorded in Embrosnerós (Apokoronas, Crete, Greece)

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
(Bonn, Germany)

Cover drawing by George Herriman
("Krazy Kat" June 11th, 1944, USA)

Graphic design by Johann Kauth

Special thanks to Benjamin Bennett, William E. Bennett, Christina Vantzou, Asher Woodworth, Tasos Grammatikos, Les Ateliers Claus, The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library, The Oglala Sioux Tribe, and the people of Livaniana, Embrósneros, and Rodakino, Crete.

Poole Music, 2022

license

about

John Also Bennett Athens, Greece

John Also Bennett is an American composer, synthesist and multi-instrumentalist who creates music that could be described as avant-garde, atmospheric, or minimalist.

johnalsobennett.com

Recommendations

contact / help

Contact John Also Bennett

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

John Also Bennett recommends:

Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett
by Christina Vantzou, Michael Harrison and John Also Bennett

Trio with Christina Vantzou & Michael Harrison John Also Bennett
go to album
Semblance
by Forma

FORMA - NYC synth fusion trio John Also Bennett
go to album

If you like John Also Bennett, you may also like:

Living Torch
by Kali Malone

supported by 50 fans who also own “Out there in the middle of nowhere”

My heart is beating slower and faster at the same time kwellou
go to album
Promises
by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra

supported by 43 fans who also own “Out there in the middle of nowhere”

hypnotic and incredibly moving marsplutomusic
go to album
Various Thoughts and Places
by 't Geruis

An exercise in finding the balance between the beauty and the broken, the latest from ’t Geruis wanders gentle soundscapes. Bandcamp New & Notable May 24, 2021
go to album
the pause in you
by Lyndsie Alguire

Beautiful piano-based compositions from this Montréal musician, where each melody feels like a contented sigh. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 13, 2021
go to album