Imperial Valley, I

350gsm gatefold sleeve.
CDR with printed surface.
Typed information sheet.
Folded Time ephemera in manilla envelope.
Music download card.

 

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Soundcloud excerpts.

 

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Tracklisting:

 

1. Fields around Calipatria, 9pm, Oct 8, 1934
2. After the tent revival, 5pm, Mar 7, 1937
3. Cloud over Brawley, 7:15pm, Jun 8, 1935
4. Near migratory labor camp, Brawley, 6am, Aug 14, 1939
5. Plains east of Holtville, 8:30pm, Mar 8, 1937
6. Mine works, Obregon, 11pm, Oct 12, 1939
7. Sand Hills outside Mesquite, heading south, 7am, Jan 21, 1934
8. ‘Lonesome desert blues’

 

Cover image: ‘A mother in California who with her husband and her two children will be returned to Oklahoma by the Relief Administration. This family had lost a two-year-old baby during the winter as a result of exposure’ by Dorothea Lange, 1937. Library of Congress Reference: LC-USF34- 016249-C. 

First in a series of recordings for Imperial Valley, an area of Southern California that adjoins Mexico. These soundworks were assembled from public domain period recordings, ranging from TV & radio broadcasts to documentary and oral history sources. This found material was then extensively reworked and manipulated before being blended with contemporary recordings of acoustic instrumentation to create a richly layered aggregate of ‘folded time’.

Credited to CF Moore and first released on the Other Forms label on November 18, 2020, the original press release went as follows: ‘Imaginal field recordings of Depression-era Imperial Valley, CA, USA. Dust-bowl tonalities. Retrograde tape hiss. Projective ethnography. Auditory nitrates after the work of Dorothea Lange.’

Imperial Valley, I was subsequently reissued on CF Moore’s research imprint Folded Time on March 13, 2024. At the same time, due to administrative complications brought about by a move from the UK to Ireland, CF Moore was revealed to be an alias of Richard Skelton. The reissue contains the additional, previously unreleased recording, ‘Lonesome desert blues’.