Family Dynamics – Service [BLUE & GOLD MARBLE VINYL] - New LP

LP Ltd Edition 180g Blue & Gold Marble Vinyl, Reverse-Board Jacket, OBI-strip [w/ download card]

An archival release of this head-scratching 2010 recording made by members of the freshly disintegrated Stars Like Fleas (called “NY’s most sublime and continuously undiscovered band” by PAPER Magazine): an amalgam of goth-adjacent 80s DIY cassette culture, private press new age, electro-acoustic improvisation, Italian prog rock, and community choirs. The debut album by Family Dynamics. Family Dynamics is Laura Ortman, Shelley Burgon, Ryan Sawyer & Shannon Fields.

BIO
Service is the sole recording by Family Dynamics (2010-2012), the brief and brightly burning offshoot of anarchic and polarizing Brooklyn music collective Stars Like Fleas. Not yet ready to let go of their musical relationship, Family Dynamics' four members splintered from Stars Like Fleas in 2010, following legendarily chaotic performances at MoMA (NYC), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the release of its final album, The Ken Burns Effect ("you need to hear it", Pitchfork; “a work of mad genius”, NPR; “has an eerie power”, The New York Times; “sublime”, Paper Magazine; “a resounding success”, Time Out NY; “uncanny”, The Village Voice; “Recommended”, Other Music).

Service was collectively composed, improvised and sung by Laura Ortman (Whitney Biennial sound artist, composer, violinist/guitarist, collaborated with Tony Conrad, Okkyung Lee, Raven Chacon), Shelley Burgon (harpist/sound artist with Bjork, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, William Tyler, Milo Hatori), Shannon Fields (producer and performer with Leverage Models, Helado Negro, Duane Pitre Ensemble, Field Guides, etc.), and Ryan Sawyer (drummer whose long CV includes Gang Gang Dance, Boredoms, Jandek, Thurston Moore, Matana Roberts, Wendy Eisenberg, Chris Forsyth, and Sun Ra’s Marshal Allen).

Service commits to building a world where raw, brutalist group vocals, melodic immediacy, fiercely idiosyncratic instrumental improvisations, magical realist lyrics, analog synthesizers and consumer electronics coexist in a delicate, surreal balance. This short album travels mystifying distances without losing its way, recalling 70’s private-press new age, the improvisations of AAM, goth-adjacent 80s DIY cassette culture, Italian electro prog rock and community choirs – sometimes within the same song.

With evident love, humor, sincerity, anxiety, ecstasy and intimacy, in Service Family Dynamics attempted to wrap its arms around the entirety of the human animal, from within the perspective of one small, battle-scarred friend/family unit.

RIYL: Tuxedomoon, early 80s Psychic TV, Jewelled Antler Collective, Robert Wyatt, Mariah, Kate NV, early Animal Collective, Tower Recordings, Legendary Pink Dots, Beverly Glenn-Copeland 

credits

From 2009-2011, Family Dynamics said what they had to say and then vanished, their members separately going on to celebrated musical careers of their own. The project emerged from the still smoldering ashes of volatile art-music collective Stars Like Fleas, one of the earliest and most polarizing bands to define the early aughts North Brooklyn music scene that produced Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective, TV On The Radio, Liars and others who went on to enjoy broader appeal and success. Family Dynamics performed for barely two years before unceremoniously vanishing, without any widely available record or document. Whatever’s Clever is thrilled to (re)issue this buried treasure, self-recorded in a cabin in Woodstock, NY, at their creative peak, and never before issued in physical format.

RIYL: Tuxedomoon, early 80s Psychic TV, Jewelled Antler Collective, Robert Wyatt, early Animal Collective, Tower Recordings.

Short-lived offshoot of Stars Like Fleas, created by Shelley Burgon, Laura Ortman, Shannon Fields & Ryan Sawyer. Service is the only recording of the band, an album that travels mystifying distances without losing its way, recalling private-press new age, the electroacoustic improv of AAM, gothy 80s lo-fi cassette scenes, Italian electro-prog & community choirs – often within the same song