fixed::context

To record their sixth album, the members of Labradford met in Chicago to work with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in June 2000. 'fixed::content' find the band stripping off the string trios of the last two albums and working with interlocking sound sources and modifiers: Carter Brown's vintage synthesizers, organs and electric piano, the distinctive Duane-Eddy-plays-Satie guitar of Mark Nelson, and Bobby Donne's four- and six-string basses. Beginning with the 16-minute 'twenty,' Labradford demonstrates a grasp of the dialectic between organic sound sources, digital processing, and composition. The guitar duet 'up to pizmo' shows a refocusing on basic elements like melody and twang while samples pulse below and keyboards waft above. Labradford found that engineer Albini made an apt foil, and 'fixed::context' resonates with the reverberating guitars and misty keyboards of Prazision, as sampling and processing bubbles beneath.