Under Island CD

Order the Under Island CD

Listen to The General Slocum or Asylum from the CD

The Society for a Subliminal State has released Under Island, a CD featuring eleven songs from the first chapter of the Subliminal History of New York State.

The CD is available in a Standard Edition and a Limited Edition,  published in partnership with Gigantic ArtSpace for their show Special Reconaisance_. The Limited Edition CD features a screenprinted cover and an editioned, handmade booklet with scores for the songs on the disc.

The Standard Edition CD costs $10 and the Limited Edition CD is $40. You can order the Limited Edition CD through the Society’s web site. The Standard Edition CD will be available here too. In the meantime you can pick it up at Eyebeam in NYC.

Liner Notes

The Under Island CDIn an alternative time of now – the land speaks.

Under Island is a story about the living land of Roosevelt Island.

The island gains sight through an illusionary fort turned gothic lighthouse on the Northern tip of the island built by a patient of the Octagon Insane Asylum. The island can now see as well as is seen. Sequestered off by Manhattan, gutted by progress, controlled for 99 years by a corporation, the sentient island revolts. Upon the co-option of its now wild southern tip – a constant state of controversy – it decides to leave the East River Estuary for the Hudson and travel northward along this Empire State’s Route of progress. Turning West on the Erie Canal/Mohawk River it eventually finds itself in the shallow, deadened, water-spout-infested Lake Erie. And so continues the island to its destination.

Under Island is from an ongoing multidisciplinary project called the Subliminal History of New York State. Here the story, written by Carrie Dashow, has been translated into a series of poems with which composer Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg created original shape note songs to be sung by audiences at participatory performances in conjunction with storytelling and a visual presentation. Shape note singing is a community singing tradition, with an unique pedagogical system for reading music, that was popular in upstate New York in the early 1800s.

front of the Under Island CDThese songs were recorded at the Widow Jane Mine in Rosendale, New York, courtesy of the Century House Historical Society (tracks 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, & 10) and the West Granville Academy in West Granville, Massachusetts (tracks 1, 4, 5, 9, & 11).

Track Listing

  1. Climate
  2. Roosevelt Island
  3. Maps
  4. Awaken
  5. The General Slocum (listen)
  6. Queensboro Bridge
  7. Asylum (listen)
  8. Octagon Moon
  9. Devastation
  10. No Cemetery
  11. End

Performers

Performed by Laura Borrelli, Crystal Burnham, Aldo Ceresa, Joanne Fuller, Joanna Lampert, Sarah Jane Leitao, Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, Pam Regan, George Seiler, Jean Seiler, Linda Shea, Jenna Faith Strizak, and Kelsey Sunderland.

Read more about Under Island, or see sample pages from the book UNDER ISLAND: the land revolts.