Gloam by Cole Pulice

Cole Pulice is a saxophone player from Minneapolis.
An improviser of ambient jazz who earned his merits touring with Bon Iver, working with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and releasing wonderful electroacoustic gems with the groups Iceblink (Moon Glyph) and LCM (Orange Milk).
With Gloam – his solo debut – Cole Pulice offers us six spacious audio holograms, one-take recordings of his saxophone entangled with live electronic hardware. We hear undulating pitch shifters, ring modulations and spectrally rich harmonizers. Cole applies all signal processing live, augmenting the calm, serene melodies he plays on his saxophone.

The electronics never serve as a mere effect here. Instead, Cole’s fine-tuned setup functions as one whole instrument with which he effortlessly morphs shapes and colors, like fractals within a kaleidoscope or fragments of stained glass in a rock tumbler.
Cole mentions the Synchromism visual art movement as an influence for this record, an American avant garde style of the early 20th century in which colour and sound were treated as equivalents. It’s a spot-on analogy for these musical gems which serve to immerse us in imaginatory prisms. Cole’s sessions conjoin artificial processes with the vibrations of his (often circular) breathing to create electro-acoustic lullabies which reveal ever more timbral layers with each listen.

Gloam was released on tape by the Moon Glyph imprint from Portland during the first lockdown in 2020 and has been licensed to Pingipung for this vinyl edition.

released August 27, 2021

Cole Pulice – Saxophone & Hardware

Mastering: Daryl Groetsch
Vinyl Cut: Helmut Erler at dubplates&mastering, Berlin.
Artwork: Steve Rosborough

Lymns:
Recorded at Sound of Music in St. Paul MN with Andrew Thoreen
Lynn Avery: Production + Processing

Sleep Helix:
Recorded at Ecstatomatic in St. Louis Park MN with Chris Cunningham

Bone Prisms:
Recorded at April Base in Eau Claire WI with Justin Andersen
Adam Zahller: Electric Guitar

Neurochrome:
Recorded at 8vB in Minneapolis MN with Alex Simpson

Arc of Shadows:
Recorded at 8vB in Minneapolis MN with Alex Simpson

Bloom:
Recorded with Patrick Marschke in Minneapolis MN
Custom signal processing application developed by Alana Horton + Patrick Marschke