Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Spans: Three Perspectival Accounts

(The Flavor of Missing) Mortar
Snow
Brim

Track 2 was recorded live at the Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago on November 20, 2011. Tracks 1 and 3 were recorded live at the Joseph Bond Chapel, University of Chicago on September 6, 2011, including room recordings by Greg O’Drobinak.

Track 2 features Andrew Furse’s Apiary, a double-feeder, double bellows free-reed aerophone. It contains two independent/identical air reservoirs with interchangeable reed-board tops. Sounds are obtained by opening small wooden slides that cover holes directly above block-mounted reeds. The feeder bellows are hand pumped and fill opposing wedge-shaped reservoirs pressurized by spring force. The air chest constitutes a near entirety of the instrument where all bellows and reed-boards are mounted. Folding legs allow the Apiary to be easily transported and played either sitting or standing. Construction details can be found here.

Format: CD-R packaged in a 5" x 7" folded textured-paper cover
Label: Rhizome.s (#08)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Apiary, Modified Boombox I, Shruti Box (Orange)
Date: June 2015