| Howard Stelzer | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Howard Stelzer |
| Born | November 23, 1974 Belle Harbor, New York, Long Island, New York, United States |
| Genres | Musique concrète, Electroacoustic music, Experimental music |
| Occupations | Composer, record producer |
| Instruments | Tape recorder |
| Years active | 1990–present |
| Labels | Intransitive Recordings, RRRecords, Audiobot, Troniks, Chondritic Sound, Students of Decay, Crippled Intellect Productions, Korm Plastics, American Tapes, Port, Banned Productions, Middle James Co., Cardinal, Razors and Medicine |
| Associated acts | Stelzer and Talbot, The BSC, Ouest, Skeletons Out |
| Website | www.intransitiverecordings.com |
Howard Stelzer (born 1974, in Belle Harbor, New York) is a composer and live performer of electronic music whose work is made primary from sounds generated by cassette tapes. In 1997 he created the independent record label Intransitive Recordings, through which he publishes CDs and records by sound and noise artists such as Brume, Jason Lescalleet, John Hudak, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Nerve Net Noise, Nmperign, Jim Haynes, Brendan Murray, Seht, Lethe, Kapotte Muziek, Lionel Marchetti, Roel Meelkop, and many others.
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Stelzer grew up on Long Island, NY, before moving with his family to Boca Raton, FL when he was 12 years old. He completed high school in Boca Raton, then began college in Tampa, and finished with a degree in English from the University of Florida in Gainesville. While in high school, Stelzer began experimenting with cassette tapes, making collages with a tape recorder by quickly pausing and unpausing a tape while simultaneously changing the source sound. He performed concerts at nightclubs and in local high schools by playing back these tapes and striking metal percussion instruments made from car parts and sheet metal scavenged from junk yards. Some of this material has been published on small-edition cassettes and on compilations.
Stelzer's first CD, "Stone Blind", was published on his own Intransitive Recordings label in 1997. The album consisted of three pieces, each roughly 20 minutes long, and made from crudely spliced cassette tapes. Each track was recorded in a single take to one side of a 40-minute tape; a piece ended when the tape ran out.
After completing an undergraduate degree in English at the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1998, Stelzer moved to Boston, Massachusetts. Here, he came into contact with musicians working in the free improvisation idiom, such as nmperign, David Gross, and Vic Rawlings. He also met local electro-acoustic composers Jason Lescalleet, Jay Sullivan, and Brendan Murray. These artists strongly influenced Stelzer's work. He began to conceive of his tape players as an instrument for live improvised music.
From 2000 until 2004, Stelzer performed in a duo with turntablist Jason Talbot, then a student at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Their music was entirely improvised, though they attempted to create a sound the resembled studio-composed spliced tape. The duo toured extensively, performing at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in the Netherlands in 2003, Heaven Gallery in Chicago, Tonic in New York City, and art spaces around the US. They became known for short, hyper-active performances that juxtaposed dense noise with silence and unexpected pauses.
Stelzer & Talbot's recorded output included several CDRs published by Absurd (in Thessaloniki, Greece), Boxmedia (in Chicago), and RRRecords (in Lowell, MA). One side of an LP titled "The Idea of Northeast", split with bass player Mike Bullock, was recorded for their first US tour in 2000. It was followed by one full studio album, Songs, recorded and produced by Wayne Rogers (of Twisted Village, Major Stars, Heathen Shame). Two complete live concerts were published on a double 7" single issued by CIP, titled Four Sides.
The duo played a reunion concert in the summer of 2010 at Axiom Center for New Media Art in Boston.
After 2004, Stelzer concentrated primarily on solo compositions and studio collaborations. One of these was Exactly What You Lost, a long-distance collaboration with New Zealand artist Stephen Clover, aka Seht. The album was composed by mailing cassette tapes from Boston to Auckland and back, recording ambient sounds (cars passing by, airplanes passing overhead, children in a playground, leaves rustling in trees) in one city and playing it back with tape effects in the other. The album was published by Intransitive Recordings in 2007.
Stelzer's other collaborators have included Frans de Waard (Kapotte Muziek), Jazzkammer, Emil Beaulieau, Giuseppe Ielasi, Peter Wright, Antony Milton, nmperign, The Cherry Point, Jason Lescalleet, Joseph Hammer, Will Guthrie, Otomo Yoshihide, Jessica Rylan, Sawako, Ben Hall, John Olson (of Wolf Eyes), Kevin Drumm, Jed Speare, and Haco. Currently, Stelzer's main projects include Skeletons Out, a drone duo with Jay Sullivan; and Ouest, a trio with Sullivan and Brendan Murray.