fake-estates-records

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-018 “The Four Louies” LP

RECORDED WITH CRACKED, February 2024, SF CA

[fake-estates-records]

"A Mechanical Joey" Score Book

200 page bound book with the music score for "A Mechanical Joey" arranged for vocalists and snare drum. Purchase includes a download of "A Mechanical Joey" LP.

BUY THE SCORE

PDF version available for free download here

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-017 “THE ANXIETY OF SYMMETRY” LP

EDITION OF 100

RECORDED WITH CRACKED, APRIL 2022, SF CA

The Anxiety of Symmetry by Bill Orcutt

Bill Orcutt’s latest “counting” album, The Anxiety of Symmetry, completes a trilogy on his Fake Estates label that started with Pure Genius (2020) and A Mechanical Joey (2021), all realized with his own Cracked computer music software. Comprising two 15-minute-long improvisations, the album’s terrain is limited to six samples of female voices singing the number of the corresponding note value in the first six pitches of a major scale. These are fashioned into compact phrases (1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, etc.) that are looped and layered. As the loops combine in multiple permutations and cycles, their uneven lengths create polyrhythms and syncopations as well as harmonies. On the surface, Anxiety is unusually placid for Orcutt, reminiscent of Minimal classics like the “Knee Plays” of Phillip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach (which also features sung numbers, although without the one-to-one relationship between pitch and interval number) and the breathy soprano voice loops in “2/1” from Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. However, the album’s title is adapted from Orcutt’s essay of the same name in the Spectres III anthology about a compulsive behavioral condition known as “Just Right” and its parallels and possible applications to music, which suggests that this titular music’s inspiration is not trance- inducement, but rather a kind of mental obsession with ordering and re-ordering. In the essay, Orcutt posits that “for the ‘Just Right’ subject composing or performing with the computer, the fixation with repetition, symmetry and arrangement in sound can be mediated with software, creating new prospects for both therapeutic engagement with their compulsions and the creation of music with a length, density and scale not possible without machines...Offloading one’s “Just Right” auditory compulsions onto the computer fulfills the promise of automatic art, allowing the full expression of the subconscious by removing the need to focus on anything but the arrangement and rearrangement of elements, and the sounds themselves become merely a byproduct of the process of satisfying these feelings.”

The Anxiety of Symmetry might then be comparable to artist Hanne Darboven’s quasi-Minimal compositions and their basis in odd mathematical calculations derived from the calendar, in taking its cue from an extra-musical process. The two pieces’ polyphony is not far off from Orcutt’s recent Music for Four Guitars, but also marks Anxiety as a departure from both Pure Genius and A Mechanical Joey. The latter bypassed melody and harmony altogether; its relentless, phantasmagorical looping and subdivisions of Joey Ramone’s trademark onstage count-offs could be seen as a wry comment on the repetitions within repetitions of rock songs and their ongoing performances, or simply the monomania of years of touring for months on end. Pure Genius presented a male and female voice stolidly reciting the numbers that correspond to the notes of a scale that are simultaneously generated with sine tones (i.e., when a voice says “one,” the first note of a scale is heard at the same time); Anxiety collapses Pure Genius’ juxtaposition of pitch and counting by having the numbers sung. Stripped down yet excessive (in the tradition of his other works with Cracked), Anxiety seems less like its predecessors’ deconstructions than a new kind of subversive easy listening.

--Alan Licht

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-016 BILL ORCUTT "THE ENTERTAINER B/W NEW WORDS FROM THE OED" LP

Super limited edition 12" LP comprising two Fake Estates releases, the "New Words From The OED" lathe cut (originally issued in an edition of 10) from 2019 and the quarantine era digital only release "The Entertainer" issued in 2020.

"The Entertainer" is a hostile deconstruction / memory purge of the Marvin Hamlisch version of this ragtime classic, a recording whose ubiquity in 1970's America inflicted untold damage on a generation.

"New Words From The OED" atomizes canonical speech, reducing the neologistic pronunciation guides from the Oxford English Dictionary to their constituent sibilants, plosives and fricatives.

The Entertainer b/w New Words from the OED by Bill Orcutt

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-015 “A MECHANICAL JOEY” LP

EDITION OF 100

RECORDED WITH CRACKED, JANUARY 1/13/2021, SF CA

A MECHANICAL JOEY by BILL ORCUTT

[fake-estates-records]

CHOC.491 “PURE GENIUS” CS30

EDITION OF 75

"Did lockdown have you mulling the impending neo-feaudaulism? Then spare a thought for poor Billy boy, whom while stuck out on the left coast surrounded by braying tech bros realised that we, the plebs, will eventually be here only to serve the machines. Recorded in August 2020 in San Francisco using his own Cracked app. 1,2,3,4!!!!"

SOLD OUT

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-014 “SLOW TROLL” 3CD EDITION OF 100 RECORDED WITH CRACKED, JUNE 2020

SLOW TROLL by BILL ORCUTT

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-013 “THE ENTERTAINER” DIGITAL DOWNLOAD RECORDED WITH CRACKED, SPRING 202O AVAILABLE AS A PAY-WHAT-YOU-WANT DOWNLOAD ON BANDCAMP.

The Entertainer by Bill Orcutt

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-012 “NEW WORDS FROM THE OED” 12" LP LATHE CUT RECORD

EDITION OF 10, LATHE CUT BY RAT BASTARD, MIAMI BEACH, FL

PEN PLOTTER PRINTED JACKET

RECORDED WITH CRACKED, AUGUST 2019

New Words From The OED by Bill Orcutt

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-011 BILL ORCUTT “LIVE IN L.A.” LP EDITION OF 100, ORCUTT: CRACKED/LAPTOP RECORDED 3/27/2019 AT ZEBULON, LOS ANGELES, CA.

Live In L.A. by Bill Orcutt

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-010 CHRIS CORSANO & BILL ORCUTT “ONE DOLLAR TOPS & BOTTOMS” CD-R EDITION OF 100, CORSANO: DRUMS, ORCUTT: CRACKED/LAPTOP REISSUE OF CS30'S FAKE-008 & FAKE-007 ON CD-R RECORDED AT THE ISLINGTON, LONDON, UK, MARCH 2018 AND CYCLONE WAREHOUSE, SAN FRANCISCO, USA, FEBRUARY 2018

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-009 BILL ORCUTT “NEU BROS / OK PHONE / RURAL BEATLES” LP

EDITION OF 100, ORCUTT: CRACKED/LAPTOP

RECORDED 2018 IN PARIS AT PRÉSENCES ÉLECTRONIQUE & IN SAN FRANCISCO AT HOME WITH CRACKED. GITHUB.COM/BILLORCUTT/CRACKED

NEU BROS / OK PHONE / RURAL BEATLES by BILL ORCUTT

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-008 CHRIS CORSANO & BILL ORCUTT “GUCCI TOPS & BOTTOMS” CS30

EDITION OF 100, CORSANO: DRUMS, ORCUTT: CRACKED/LAPTOP

RECORDED AT THE ISLINGTON, LONDON, UK, MARCH 2018

GUCCI TOPS & BOTTOMS by CHRIS CORSANO & BILL ORCUTT

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-007 CHRIS CORSANO & BILL ORCUTT “ONE DOLLAR HITS” CS30

EDITION OF 80, CORSANO: DRUMS, ORCUTT: CRACKED/LAPTOP

RECORDED AT CYCLONE, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, FEBRUARY 2018

ONE DOLLAR HITS by CHRIS CORSANO & BILL ORCUTT

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-006 “AN ACCOUNT OF THE CRIMES OF PETER THIEL AND HIS SUBSEQUENT ARREST, TRIAL AND EXECUTION.” 12" LP

EDITION OF 100, TIP-ON JACKETS SILKSCREENED BY SIWA.

RECORDED WITH CRACKED, APRIL 2017

INCLUDES A COMPANION BOOK

AN ACCOUNT OF THE CRIMES OF PETER THIEL AND HIS SUBSEQUENT ARREST, TRIAL AND EXECUTION. by BILL ORCUTT

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-005 “A VISIT WITH THE BROOKLYN WHALE B/W GHOST OR MONSTER?” 7" LATHE CUT RECORD

EDITION OF 20, LATHE CUT BY RAT BASTARD, MIAMI BEACH, FL

RECORDED WITH CRACKED, APRIL 2017

A VISIT WITH THE BROOKLYN WHALE B/W GHOST OR MONSTER? by BILL ORCUTT

[fake-estates-records]

FAKE-004 “CRACKED MUSIC” 12" LP

EDITION OF 100, JACKET SILKSCREENED BY SIWA

RECORDED WITH CRACKED, MAY 2016

CRACKED MUSIC by BILL ORCUTT