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New & Used
Toby and Warwick are proud to announce the release of the second Perfect Black Swan collaboration, a book titled: New & Used.
New & Used sees the two Australian-born artists working closely together again, this time with Warwick's photographs leading the way (rather than Toby's music).
The book contains Toby's first published, full-length fiction (for which he has adopted the nom-de-plume of TB Hemingway - his mother's surname).
Warwick Baker’s photographs – a mix of serene large format pieces and fleeting glimpses caught with a 35mm camera – beautifully portray the faded and falling scenery that stretches from deep in the California and Arizona deserts, to the imperfect sprawl of Los Angeles.
From there, TB Hemingway’s touching tales of brothers who struggle to hold them-selves and their family’s bonds together, inject fully-formed characters into the settings captured so hauntingly on film.
The combined effect is a multi-dimensional illustration of towns, places, people and a whole society coming to terms with its demise. Visual and emotional imagery, of things we may not know, but somehow recognize.
In all there are 3 short stories and over 20 photographs contained in this First Edition - available online now, in a limited run of 500 numbered copies.
You can now buy the book online - using PayPal (that means credit cards, bank cards, etc).
US$19 postage paid, around the world.
And Collective ~ A Place Tells A Story
Toby recently contributed 5 short new tracks the latest book/CD project by Melbourne publishers And Collective.
The book and CD (included) combine work from artists in various media, each responding to the theme A Place Tells A Story. Warwick Baker also contributed some beautiful new photographs, taken in Canberra, Australia, where he grew up.
Toby describes recording the tracks for A Place Tells A Story:
"This was recorded in and around the house where I lived nine years ago, when I first moved to Los Angeles. It’s an old, weatherboard, “Arts-n-Crafts”-style house – wedged between a busy road and the Pacific Ocean. So many sounds; birds, breezes, cars, waves, wood, furniture, runners, bikers, boardwalk-whistlers and me."
One of the tracks, "Boardwalk" (featuring bike riders and a jolly whistler on the Venice Beach boardwalk), can be heard on the player above.
More information on the book and CD is available here:
andcollective.com
Perfect Black Swan 1
I don’t think it is any mistake that Perfect Black Swan – a side project of Horse Stories’ frontman Toby Burke – are launching their CD, 1, in combination with a photography exhibition. Their music is so extraordinarily evocative that it could almost be cinema. Not a soundtrack for cinema, mind you, but the actual art form itself. At first I thought this might be good music to clean the bath to. You know the kind: backgroundy, elevator type stuff that you don’t really take all that much notice of. Trust me though, I was wrong. The wet sponge literally dried in my hand as I knelt down, and the White King became caked and hard to manage as this amazing record glued me to my unfortunate, domestic spot. I don’t think it was any accident that I was kneeling either: this was very close to a religious experience.
My flatmate, who has been blind since birth, came and told me this music made her feel like she could see, and there is hardly any greater praise than that.
‘Songs’ such as Photograph of My Grandfather, Light (as seen through distant trees), and Words Written in Toothpaste, instantly transported me to another place where seemingly empty space is filled by imagery we humans are perhaps not yet intelligent enough to appreciate.
As the opening bars graced my stereo, I realised something fairly amazing: this music transcends traditional notions of putting on a record and listening to it, how many bands can we truly say that about? This is, well yes, transcendental stuff; visceral, experienced in some part of the body or brain that we haven’t quite figured out yet. Perfect Black Swan have though, and for that at least, forgetting even that this is beautiful stuff, 1 deserves our attention and gratitude.
Tony McMahon
- Inpress Magazine, Melbourne
Perfect Black Swan photographs by Warwick Baker
The packaging was beautifully printed on recycled card, by a book printer. Each of the limited copies is hand-numbered.
You can now buy the album, 1, online - using PayPal (that means credit cards, bank cards, etc).
US$15 postage paid, around the world.
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