Field Dept. (estlin usher & Andy Klingensmith)
2021, Modern Concern

https://moco.bandcamp.com/album/room-assignment-1

“The home inside, the world outside; the internal workings of a mechanism and the sounds heard throughout the machine. The exterior world presents itself to our senses, the interior world is of emotion and experience that digests, finds meaning, and lives through the sensed.

Ulteriorities. Temperature and architecture. The quiet structure of mood, feeling, existing in a space. Fundamental properties of shelter. A preeminent struggle against nature. Room temperature determined by a furnace. Hot water to sanitize and cleanse. Refrigeration to store sustenance over long periods of time. All of these manipulations of heat establish important preconditions for our daily existence, yet erase themselves from our awareness when they are truly working well.”

Room Assignment #1 recontextualizes the sound of the house and the machines that occupy it in order to highlight the aural properties of shelter, domesticity, and the fundamental conditions that dictate our quality of life.

Source material from furnaces, hot water heaters, refrigerators and mini-refrigerators, hallways, and empty cassettes in both authors’ houses. Assumed isolation. Absolute minimalism. For patient headphone listening. Room Assignment #1 was recorded in November of 2020 in Chicago, Illinois.