Newsletter : August 2009

New Release


Au Clair de la Lune
PT-1001 / Single-sided, 45rpm record with etched back
Release Date: September 15, 2009
In 2008 the First Sounds collaborative corrected the history of recorded sound when it identified—and played back—a recording of the human voice inscribed on paper, in Paris, 17 years before Thomas Edison invented the phonograph. Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville entrusted this and other documents to the Institute of France’s Academy of Sciences in the summer of 1861. With this deposit he sought to establish the priority of his sound-inscribing invention, the phonautograph. He included several phonautograms made in 1860 of vocal scales, songs, and recitations.

Example “No. 5”—Au Clair de la Lune from April 9th 1860—is the earliest dated sound recording in the deposit. Scott prepared its recording surface by wrapping a sheet of paper around a cylinder which he rotated over a smoking lantern to cover with soot. He recorded with two styli—one driven by the vibrations of a tuning fork, the other driven by a membrane vibrating in sympathy with his voice. He removed the paper from the cylinder and immersed it in an alcohol-based fixative.

Scott made this recording to be seen, not heard. He sang purposely into his instrument to reveal the shape of sounds and the frequency of his notes. In listening to Au Clair we eavesdrop not on a musical performance, but on a scientific experiment—wafting imperfectly through a window in time.

It is with this recording that Dust-to-Digital proudly inaugurates its vinyl imprint Parlortone. The one-sided, 45rpm record comes complete with an etched back, a descriptive essay and a reproduction of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville’s original Au Clair de la Lune phonautogram.

Click here for more information; click here to view photographs of the record pressing process for Au Clair de la Lune; and click here to purchase a copy (in stock now).



Upcoming Releases
We are very excited to announce that John Fahey's Fonotone Years is in production, and we are doing everything we possibly can to have the title out by year's end. As we wrote in a previous newsletter, the set will be a co-release between Dust-to-Digital and Revenant Records. As for the music the set will feature, we are including every recording John made for Joe Bussard's Fonotone record label. The result will be a five-CD box set of music that was only available in the 1950s and '60s in limited pressings on 78rpm acetate records. We will be mastering the audio from the original, pristine reel-to-reel tapes.

Also in the works is a separate two-CD set called Roots of Fahey, which will showcase the songs and musicians that inspired and influenced John throughout his recording career. Each track comes from the 78rpm record collection of John's lifelong friend, Joe Bussard.

In a continued effort to tell the story of Art Rosenbaum's field recording work, Neil Rosenbaum is putting the finishing touches on Sing My Troubles By, which should be available on DVD later this year. The feature-length documentary showcases older women from the state of Georgia and examines how traditional music has played a major role in each of their lives. Art Rosenbaum is producing the film with his son.

In vinyl news, Parlortone has four LPs in pre-production. Two of the titles are double LPs which come from the Dust-to-Digital back catalog — Where Will You Be Christmas Day? and Black Mirror. The other two are going to be Parlortone originals — Rev. Johnny L. Jones The Hurricane that Hit Atlanta and a Various Artists compilation entitled International Archive of the String. We will continue to keep you posted on these and other releases as more information becomes available.

Upcoming Events
Tomorrow night (8/14/2009) in Atlanta there will be two events exhibiting very different spectrums of blues music. Tony Bryant, who appears on Art of Field Recording Volume II, will be host and perform a show at the Highland Inn Ballroom. Tony told us the show will serve as a history of the blues and present the changes in styles the genre has experienced over the years. Art Rosenbaum will serve as MC for the event.

Across town at Club 529, Jonathan Kane will be performing his February set, which is a deconstructive, minimalist approach to the blues. He and his band will then head to Asheville, North Carolina on Saturday (8/15/2009) to take part in the Transfigurations of Harvest Records, a celebration of the fifth anniversary of an incredible independent record shop. Dust-to-Digital's founder, Lance Ledbetter, will also be on hand at the festival for a panel discussion with several independent record label owners at the Fine Arts Theatre on Saturday.

Also on Saturday, future Dust-to-Digital compiler John Heneghan will be performing with his group East River String Band at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco as a part of the San Francisco Jug Band Festival. Click here to read Amanda Petrusich's recent article about John and other 78rpm record collectors that appeared in the New York Times, and click here for a complete list of ERSB's upcoming gigs.

On September 4-6 Dust-to-Digital will have a booth at the Decatur Book Festival, so if you're around please stop by and say hi. Finally, a little further down the road and on the other side of the Atlantic, Victrola Favorites compiler, Rob Millis, will be at the Palais de Tokyo on October 29 to take part in Infamous Carousel. He will be performing with his band Climax Golden Twins, spinning 78s, showing some of the films he has made for Sublime Frequencies, and screening Ed Gillan's Desperate Man Blues.