Snapshots of an abandoned city. Fragments of song drifting out of basements and across alleyways, muffled conversations. Scrutinized, the "music" disappears - maybe paracusia? Brass Orchids, Anne Guthrie's second full-length album for Students of Decay, is an entrancing collage of new and old sounds drawn from a variety of beguiling sources. Posthumous contributions from the artist's grandfather, a jazz pianist; obsolete media palimpsests (some vanity, some necessity); tap dancing on a peeling floor... An unsettling and strangely beautiful album - akin to something on the tip of your tongue, which, before you can name it, slips away into forgetting....
Anne Guthrie is a French horn player, field recording and audio installation artist born in 1983 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She studied composition with Amelia Kaplan, David Karl Gompper, Lawrence Fritts and Michael Young. She is currently the Managing Director of the S.E.M. Ensemble in Brooklyn.