Other Minds is happy to welcome Henry Birdsey, a composer operating in the vanguard of “new downtown” experimentalism, to the Other Minds Records roster! His album Half-Dragged is available today on the Other Minds Bandcamp as a digital release and a limited-edition cassette with a six panel front and back J-card.
With his bowed lap steel guitar tuned to a system of his own design, prepared with various metal objects to accentuate harmonics across the strings, Half Dragged conjures a spectral glow around the fundamentals of the instrument. Birdsey's recording process involves placing amplifiers and microphones throughout a space, in different rooms with unique acoustic properties, to create a complex field of phasing, standing waves, and oscillating sound layers. The material on the album was developed while on tour on the West Coast in early 2020 and recorded in his hometown of Ripton, Vermont.