Peripheral Lands

Asher Levitas is an experimental musician and sound artist. His practice explores the intersection between ambient, pop and field recordings. Originally releasing music and performing with the Audio-Visual Collective Old Apparatus in the 2010's, Asher has gone on to work on a number of projects, including producing Paper Dollhouse's The Sky Looks Different Here and releasing his solo debut album Lit Harness on Planet Mu. Over the last decade or more he has collaborated with labels including The Tapeworm, Deep Medi and Houndstooth, and has been published by Mute Song and Multiverse. Asher's AV live shows have toured internationally, playing at music festivals and art galleries alike, most notably at Barbican Centre, ICA and Sonic Acts. His collaborative installation work has been shown at Standpoint Gallery, London and SIGGRAPH Asia Art Gallery, Tokyo. His music has been supported by Mary Anne-Hobbs, Tom Ravenscroft and Late Junction, and has been covered by The Wire, The Quietus and i-D.

Peripheral Lands hones in on sound ecologies; zooming in on the mingling of static electricity, fish respiring and nesting birds heard from deep under a port, phone interference in concrete walls, bat calls through an echo locator and the easing pitter patter of a coastal storm. It traces the attack and decay of sonic landscapes and resonates these patterns through the bodies of instruments, both virtual and analog, shaping the composition's textures, melodies and rhythms. The record draws inspiration from Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, which quotes W.H. Hudson: "To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime's experience. In the world of poetic experience, it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields—these are as much as a man can fully experience."

For fans of Felicia Atkinson, Sowako, Grouper, Huerco S., Stephan Matheiu and Stars of the Lid