Chalk Dogs

Johnstone | Leamy | Garden

Available to DOWNLOAD or as a PRINT-ON-DEMAND CD

CHALK DOGS is a series of multi-layered works created during (and in response to) New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown between April and June 2020. The project was developed and completed entirely in isolation and explores the blurred lines between inner and outer tensions at a time of unease and uncertainty.

The album is a companion piece to CHALK DOGS HAVE NO NAMES, an exhibition of new works by Neil Johnstone showing at Potocki Paterson Gallery (41-47 Dixon Street, Wellington) from Friday, September 11 to October 25. Click HERE to visit the gallery website and HERE to find out more about Neil and his art.

The pieces were inspired by the daily arrival of tide-washed debris along the shoreline of Wellington beaches. While seemingly random and unrelated, collectively these objects appeared like cryptic signs and messages that spoke to discard, decay, abandonment and collapse.

The resulting compositions are impressionistic subconscious meditations on chance and unpredictability, seclusion and isolation, impermanence and degeneration, surreal and unsettling spaces that suggest a Lynchian and Victorian Grand Guignol underpinned by a sense of loss and quiet despair.

The structural arc of each piece is such that they slowly morph from one point to another in a manner that reflects the transitory nature of all things. Sounds that exist for microseconds – never to be repeated – come and go as everything does, but by capturing and shaping these moments they have become frozen memories of subtly nuanced moments in time. In true surrealist fashion, these sculptural soundscapes subconsciously comment on our shared experience and inevitable mortality in both the broadest and narrowest of ways.

Produced, recorded & composed by Neil Johnstone, Sam Leamy & Steve Garden
Mixed by Steve Garden
Artwork by Neil Johnstone
Design by UnkleFrance
Printing by Studio Q

Neil Johnstone (synthesized soundscapes, Korg MS2000, Synthstrom Deluge)
Sam Leamy (guitar, effects)
Steve Garden (textures, treatments)

“… I’d particularly call your attention to the mind-expanding … Chalk Dogs, probably my favourite NZ album of 2020 …” Doug Dillaman, Cultural Offset, Dec 2020

One of Graham Reid’s ‘best of the year’ picks for 2020 on his Elsewhere blog, he wrote, “Eerie, sonically and emotionally unsettling instrumentals … strange beauty, chaos and dark but a rewarding ride.”

Released: 10 September 2020
Catalogue: RAT-D102

Swell

A film by Emma Bowen (2020)

NEIL JOHNSTONE

Before emigrating to New Zealand in 2017, Neil’s multimedia artworks were widely exhibited in galleries and workshops throughout Europe and the United Kingdom. The subject and content of his work includes eco-degradation, immigration, memory, homelessness, urban renewal, the intersection between bees and quantum physics, and transitory movement in its many aspects.

“I’m conceptual artist more than a musician, with a strong fascination for how sound affects us emotionally, and can be used to explore abstract ideas like time and consciousness.”

SAM LEAMY

Sam is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work spans a range of genres and musical platforms. He has collaborated with numerous bands over the last 15 years, including avant-garde pop duo Spork and atmospheric-rock heavyweights Opium Eater.

He has produced a number of acousmatic and electroacoustic works as a solo artist, as well as composing music for films. As a performer he specialises in textural guitar playing aided by the use of effects pedals.

STEVE GARDEN

Better known as the driving force behind Rattle Records, Steve began his career in music as a touring musician in the mid-70s. In the early 80s he worked as a studio musician, which led to an active interest in audio engineering and music production.

In the mid-90s, after a decade working at Progressive Music Studio in downtown Auckland, he established Garden Shed Music Studio, a digital project studio that continues to function as the production-hub for all Rattle releases.