Chop Shop is the moniker of New York based sound artist Scott Konzelmann, whose activities have comprised installations featuring his speaker construction assemblages and sonic compositions since 1987. There have been plenty of micro-edition CD-R releases, 2 noted 3”CDs for the prestigious V2 label, several old school cassettes, a handful of singles, and two legendary 10″ vinyl productions. One of which was a double 10″ bound in roofing tar strapped to a plate of steel. The other was a split 10″ with Small Cruel Party, which was literally chopped in half and assembled on the listener’s turntable at their needle’s peril. 23five Incorporated is delighted to present Oxide, the long overdue full-length CD from Chop Shop.
Konzelmann’s sound and noise are intrinsically connected to his sculptural objects. Forged from repurposed junkyard fragments fitted with functional loudspeakers, these objects compress and articulate particular frequencies into hissing static, jet-engine drones, and noxious rumbles, all of which retain a metallurgist residue. Such were the sounds on the original analogue tapes of Oxide; unfortunately, those tapes had endured what Konzelmann merely qualifies as “an unhappy accident,” which caused extensive and prolonged moisture damage to the tapes. In revisiting these tapes, Konzelmann discovered drop-outs and print-throughs, as ghostly noises shadowed his muscular drone music. The tape itself had also begun to crumble during playback, making an eerily similar parallel to William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. However, Chop Shop does not share Basinski’s melancholy theatrics, and Oxide dials in a proper dose of distilled contemporary sonic dead-tech mantra through a leaden stream paralleling the Hafler Trio’s Intoutof
