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Cicada Waves

by Ben Seretan

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  • Streaming + Download

    Pre-order of Cicada Waves. You get 5 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
    Purchasable with gift card
    releases April 30, 2021

      $9 USD  or more

     

  • Cassette + Digital Album

    The 2nd Edition of Ben Seretan's 'Cicada Waves' ~ Available on Transparent, Glitter Green Shells. (((Please be advised that this product will ship ~2 weeks after street date.)))

    Includes digital pre-order of Cicada Waves. You get 5 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
    digital album releases April 30, 2021
    item ships out on or around May 17, 2021
    edition of 100 
    Purchasable with gift card

      $9 USD or more 

     

  • Limited Edition Cassette
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Includes digital pre-order of Cicada Waves. You get 5 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

    Sold Out
1.
Cicada Waves 1
2.
3pm Rainstorm
3.
Cicada Waves 2 07:17 video
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4.
Rain and Cicadas 09:56 video
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5.
11pm Sudden Thunderstorm 06:32 video
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6.
8pm Crickets 06:22 video
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7.
Fog Rolls Out Rabun Gap 06:42 video
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about

During an artist residency in the thick of the pandemic, tucked away in a dance studio at the base of the Appalachian mountains, Ben Seretan set out to finally make the piano recordings he had always wanted to make: pristine, clean, ringing, indeterminate. For two weeks he would be alone with an antique Steinway—a blessing that, in spite of an unexpected, globally tragic, and tremendously surreal circumstance, miraculously remained possible.

But "silence" and even "peace and quiet" are slippery, man-made illusions that we can never quite grab hold of, and this proved to be especially true in the woods. The environs there were riotous, almost joyously noisy; the old wood creaking with rot, rain pelting the roof five times a day, rolling thunder. And then there was the breathtaking presence of critters; hissing feral cats, fiddling crickets, birds belting their songs every morning and, ever-presently, the sea of cicadas—enormous swarms of them—so loud and so multidirectional, as though they might try to lift the concert piano right off of the earth.

"It was clear the moment I hit 'record' that any sound I captured from the piano would always carry some other sound with it. There would be no silence whatsoever. So I gave in—I threw open the windows and let the world in."

Cicada Waves, then, is the sound of allowance. It's the sound of room being made, of guards being dropped, of adaptation. It's more often than not the sound of a piano *not* being played. It's the sound of wings or wind or water doing what they will.

These recordings are shared with as little artifice as possible; there are no edits or comped parts, no mixing, no second takes. The album is, more or less, simply and exactly the sounds that happened in the world at that moment, as chaotic and full of sound as they ought to be.

credits

releases April 30, 2021

Performed and recorded by Ben Seretan, August 2020 while in residence at the Hambidge Center, a really wonderful place in the unincorporated community of Rabun Gap, GA

Mastering by Gus Elg, Sky Onion

Video for "Rain and Cicadas" by Bahareh Khoshooee:
baharehkhoshooee.com

Photography and video production by Gracelee Lawrence:
www.graceleelawrence.com

license

all rights reserved

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Ben Seretan Troy, New York

**ECSTATIC JOY**

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dial 561.926.9741 for the my life's work hotline

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