Yi Xin Tong’s album release party will be held at YveYANG Gallery Saturday.
03.14.2018
Last November 2017, Yi Xin Tong traveled tens of thousands of miles from New York to Shanghai, Mohe County, Harbin, Kashigar, Ürümqi, Lanzhou, and Sanya to record sound for a projected called Ultima Thule, a phrase meaning "distant regions beyond the known world." Some of these places were extremely remote, and they were drastically different geographically and culturally. One day Tong was walking on ice and listening to the Amur River freezing up in front of thick Russian forests. The next day interminable military siren in an ancient Islamic city filled his ears and clogged his mind. Twenty hours of connecting flights after, schools of colorful coral fish near the beach and sweaty tourists holding coconuts reminded him he was transported to a tropical zone. Space and seasons heavily compressed on him. It felt like exercising for space travel.
Echoing this the sense of compression, field recordings made at the aforementioned locations were superimposed to create these realistic but deceptive sound compositions, thanks to the lack of any visual evidence. This way, Ultima Thule is not only an emotional documentation of the inconspicuous parts of our world through sound, but also a construction of seemingly convincing but nonexistent environments. A limited edition of 50 CDs were produced with Katydid Records. Participants will have the chance to win signed copies by lottery at the event, after which the full album will be released on the artist website here, YouTube, and Xiami.
