Steve Roden A Big Circle Drawn With Little Hands

Steve Roden is an artist living in Pasadena. His work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, and performance. He has previously been active under the moniker In Be Tween Noise and coined the term lowercase" for a music that "bears a certain sense of quiet and humility; it does not demand attention, it must be discovered. the work might imply one thing on the surface but contain other things beneath." His working process often uses a combination of idiosyncratic notations using colors or symbols, an association of self-imposed rules and openings for intuitive improvisations. He has collaborated with Brandon LaBelle, Franscisco López, Jason Kahn, Machinefabriek, Stephen Vitiello, Bernhard Günter and many others. This LP started as a proposition from ini.itu to work on specific audio materials, that Steve Roden quickly asked to be expanded to "radio, old records, instruments, [...] things that I can bring from your location to my own". Unusual tools used to produce sounds, in wandering and drifting ways, that can be apprehended on the insert accompanying the record. The results are amiable and enigmatic wanderings, slow additions of tiny, delicate elements which sketch nocturnal and rich environments, at times laidback, austere, uneasy, at times dense, wistful, but always intriguing.
Quotes about Steve Roden : "Roden's best work retains its own poetic verve. While coaxing beauty out of randomness, his inventive touch results in small marvels of unexpected delight." [Christopher Knight] "Intuition has become a dirty word in contemporary-art discourse, but Roden wears it as a badge of honor, following his own loopy logic to discover hidden potentialities and irrational rewards and leaping to conclusions no system could reach without a little "mystic" tinkering." [ Michael Ned Holte ] "I can't help but think about Rolf Julius, [...] he's been a huge inspiration to me and both my sound work and visual work. What i love about his work is that it always appears as somewhat ordinary in terms of its presence and i mean that in a very positive way. His work doesn't seduce you at first, as much as it quietly welcomes you to enter it on your own terms. You have to work a little bit to notice the magic, and at first blush his work seems somewhat ordinary on the outside, but once you really begin to look and listen, you are completely immersed." [Steve Roden] Limited to 250 copies + A3 insert.